Ye hum tribunal ke vakeel*
ye ham tribunal ke vakeel hain
jo ahl-e-jubba ki tamkanat se na rob khaen,
na jaan bechen na writ likhhein,
na robe pehnhein
[We are the sinners of the tribunal bar
who will not be cowed by the splendour of the robed ones
will not bow, will not beg, will not wear the gown
will not draft the writ they say we cannot file]
ye ham tribunal ke vakeel hain
ki ab file mein raat bhi ae to ye
aankhein nahin bujhengi
ki ab jo ye corridor chhuṭ chuka hai use
dhundne ki zid na karna
[We are the sinners of the tribunal bar
for whom the night now arrives inside the file
and still these eyes will not go dark
for the corridor we lost along the way
do not insist on finding it again]
The hierarchy of the Indian bar is not complicated. The Supreme Court lawyer is God. The High Court lawyer is a senior deity. The tribunal lawyer is, well – the volunteer who helps keep the temple clean.
We are the sinners of the tribunal bar
There is a particular species of lawyer in this country who has argued before forums that regulate the electricity your city runs on, the merger your employer just cleared, the spectrum your phone uses, the securities trade that moved a market. This lawyer carries a brief that took three to eight weeks to prepare. This lawyer is greeted at every family gathering with the same question: “Beta, High Court nahi jaate?”
These “poor” guys practice in the regulatory wilderness where the law meets the economy. You don’t know them. They have made their peace with this, mostly.
Who will not be cowed by the splendour of the robed ones
The hierarchy of the Indian bar is not complicated. The Supreme Court lawyer is God. The High Court lawyer is a senior deity. The tribunal lawyer is, well – the volunteer who helps keep the temple clean. He doesn’t get to sit with the priest though.
This is not a new complaint. It is barely even a complaint. It is simply the weather of their professional lives.
They are not nobody, of course. The SAT lawyer who argued a landmark insider trading matter last month will be quoted in the papers - the dyed one though. The competition lawyer whose CCI briefing shaped a significant market decision is being congratulated over LinkedIn. That TDSAT practitioner who has more telecom regulatory jurisprudence in her head than most law schools – well, you may have to google her name – but she is big in the 2G-3G circles – the not glamorous ones, of course. The APTEL silk whose tariff arguments determine electricity prices for an entire state – his scandals are not being discussed - not outside APTEL parties for sure.
They may regulate the commanding heights of the economy, but they remain at the foothills of professional esteem.
Oh by the way, the tribunals also do not have infrastructure. Let me be precise about this.
Don’t take me wrong. They are not some coy humble silent superheroes. They are just them.
Will not bow, will not beg, will not wear the gown
Oh by the way, the tribunals also do not have infrastructure. Let me be precise about this.
They do not reliably have water. Some run short of functional courtrooms. Some, while perfectly adequate by office-building standards, are not by any stretch a bar. There is no canteen in the traditional sense at most of these forums.
The High Court bar room is a place of genuine social function – gossip, chai, networking. Tribunal lawyers on the other hand eat sad sandwiches from Blue Tokai between court room spaces, representing clients whose matters are possibly worth more than some municipal budgets. They love these sandwiches, of course. They’d like the canteen though.
Will not draft the writ they say we cannot file
Tribunals, you know, do not have judicial review. This is constitutionally settled and they have accepted it. What they have instead is statutory appeal – grounds, cross-objections, interlocutory applications, stays, recalls, revivals. A full procedural ecosystem. It takes time. It takes paper. It takes them.
For whom the night now arrives inside the file
The files deserve their own elegy. A tariff appeal arrives with the impugned order, which itself runs into several hundred pages. A CCI matter involving a merger will have economic analysis that requires a separate expert just to read. A SAT appeal on a settlement order will have more SEBI circulars than anyone should encounter in a lifetime.
Then there are annexures, a petition, a judgment compilation, plus what we call a written note – which should ideally be 2 pages long – font size no bar.
They do not reliably have water.
And still these eyes will not go dark
They make, it should be said, good money.
This is the fact that sits awkwardly under everything else. The invisibility, the infrastructure, the informal sandwich - none of it maps onto the fees. The regulatory bar is, in billing terms, doing extremely well.
They do not bring this up. It seems impolite, given the complaints made so far.
For the corridor we lost along the way
And yet. And yet they watch the High Court lawyer walk past – confident stride, black gown, marble floors – and something moves in them. Not quite envy, not quite regret. The specific ache of the person who took the other road and is doing fine on it, thank you, but occasionally wonders about the road not taken. Robert Frost did not know it all.
The corridor. The one we did not end up in.
Do not insist on finding it again
Every few years, someone leaves. Goes back to general litigation, pivots to arbitration, escapes into a government role. When this happens, those who remain exchange a look. It contains multitudes.
“Oh,” they say. “You escaped.”
They mean it as a joke, mostly.
*This is a parody version of Kishwar Naheed’s original poem ‘Hum gunahgar auraten’. Access the original version here.