10 lawyers from panel of Standing Counsels replaced

PANJIM: Ten advocates from the panel of Goa State Standing Counsels, appearing before the courts outside Goa and the National Green Tribunal (NGT), Delhi have been replaced with a new set of lawyers. 

Additional government advocate/standing counsel Salvador Santosh Rebello and nine standing counsels Shashank Garg, Sibo Sankar Mishra, Jai Dehadrai, Rajiv Nanda, Anshuman Srivastav, Rukmini Bobde, Arjun Bobde, Mayuri Narayan Chawla and Merusagar Samantaray have been directed to hand over all the briefs regarding Goa-related matters before various courts to the Office of the Resident Commissioner, New Delhi. 

In its order, the Department of Law & Judiciary states, “Government of Goa has decided to drop the following names of Advocates from the panel of State Standing Counsels before the Supreme Court of India, New Delhi, National Green Tribunal, New Delhi and other Courts including JERC Gurgao, High Court of Delhi and other Tribunals and to discontinue them from appearing in all the cases of Government of Goa with immediate effect.” 

The decision, taken in consultation with Advocate General of Goa Devidas Pangam, has also reconstituted the panel by inducting eight standing counsels namely Ravindra Ashok Lokhande, Pratap Venugopal, Arun Pednekar, Shridhar Y Chitre, Ruchira Gupta, Subodh Patil, Sujata Kordukar and Surendu Sankar Das. 

As per the order, the allotment of cases for defending the interest of Goa government before the Supreme Court will be assigned to them by Chief Minister and/or AG on a case-to-case basis. The Standing Counsels has also to keep the AG informed about the date of hearing of the matters well in advance and seek his instructions from time-to-time.

The change in panel comes two months after the cabinet replaced incumbent AG Dattaprasad Lawande with the new AG; and nearly a month later it decided to relieve Additional Solicitor General of India Atmaram Nadkarni from representing Goa in any matter before the Supreme Court or NGT or any court outside Goa including Mhadei Water Disputes Tribunal.