Eight male advocates have been designated as senior counsel in the Bombay high court, with six being based in Mumbai, one in Aurangabad and one in Nagpur.

Breaking: The Supreme Court today overruled the doctrine laid down in its own year 2002 landmark Bhatia International v Bulk Trading SA & Anr case, which held that Indian courts had exclusive jurisdiction to test the validity of an arbitral award made in India even when the proper law of the contract is the law of another country.

On-notice Amarchand Mangaldas equity partner Ciccu Mukhopadhaya is expected to argue in the Supreme Court for the first time since having been designated senior counsel in December 2011, with 10 other senior advocates appearing in the test case relating the Bhatia International arbitration doctrine in the court’s special constitutional bench.

Exclusive: Amarchand Mangaldas Delhi equity partner and litigation head Ciccu Mukhopadhaya has resigned to start independent court practice after having been designated as senior counsel.

Exclusive: The Bombay High Court has designated 15 new senior counsel, including Lakshmi Kumaran and Sridharan managing partner V Sridharan and the co-founder of the Lawyers Collective NGO and United Nations Human Right Council (UNHRC) special rapporteur Anand Grover, but again not a single female advocate was given the nod.

We bump into each other in the long corridor adjacent to Court 5. It’s cruel, I know I shouldn’t be asking but then I do anyway. “Got any briefs yet?” I see the furrows on his forehead. Anxiety. I know what it feels like. Only two minutes earlier, after some small talk he had confided in me: “I’m independent these days.”

In the last two decades the Delhi and Mumbai High Courts appointed only three female senior counsel each out of a total of 122 and 81 new senior advocate designations awarded by the courts reveals Legally India’s exclusive year-on-year analysis of senior counsel elevations in the country’s top two high courts.

But the senior prospects at the bar are actually bleak for both sexes.

The Delhi High Court has designated Delhi Bar Council Chairman Rakesh Tiku and nine other advocates, including two female lawyers, as senior counsels in a full court room meeting on 27 January.

Senior advocate and Rajya Sabha MP Abhishek Manu Singhvi talks about his education experience at India’s and the world’s top educational institutions and explains how tough it is to become a senior counsel, despite having a famous father.