Lawyers need no longer address Supreme Court judges with phrases like “My Lord” and “Your Lordship,” the Bar Council of India has decided, calling the terms “relics of the colonial past”.
Supreme Court and high court judges can now be called “Your Honour”, while in lower courts presiding officers may be called “sir” or its equivalent in local languages, the Indian media reported on Thursday.
Although no longer required to use the phrase, lawyers unable to break the habit of saying “Milord” can continue to do so, the reports said.
The new guidelines were passed in a resolution by the bar association, which was prompted to look at the issue after a lawyer approached them in February.
Lawyer Sanjeev Bhatnagar had first brought the petition before the Supreme Court.
“It is not desirable or essential to continue with the obsolete customary practice, which smacks of slavery in independent India,” Bhatnagar told the two-judge bench at the time.
But the court kicked out the petition filed on behalf of the Progressive and Vigiliant Lawyers’ Forum, saying it was not its job to decide how lawyers address the dispensers of justice.
India adopted its judicial system from the British when the country was one of its colonies. It gained its independence in 1947. – AFP