Manohar lal Khattar-led Haryana Government will examine the appointments of senior advocates, who were paid hefty fees during the tenure of previous Congress Government in the State.
“The Government will examine the procedure followed by the previous Congress regime to appoint senior advocates... If any irregularity is found, action will be taken. Senior advocates were appointed by the previous Government to defend the cases in the court and were paid hefty amount of fees,” said Haryana Finance Minister Capt. Abhimanyu, while giving reply to a question raised by MlA Mahipal Dhanda regarding payments of hefty fees to senior advocates by previous Congress Government in the state.
Elaborating about the whopping amount paid to various senior advocates, Capt. Abhimanyu said an amount of Rs5,20,07,262 have been paid to KTS Tulsi, senior advocate and his three assisting counsels to contest the case in the lower court in Gurgaon for an incident of arson and rioting at Maruti Suzuki. Tulsi, now Congress MP from Rajya Sabha, had been paid Rs11,25,000 per appearance and 10 per cent clerkage in the case.
Payments have been also made to Congress leaders and senior advocates Abhishek Manu Singhvi and Ashwani Kumar for defending cases. While Rs1.04 crore has been paid to Abhishek Manu Singvi, Rs1.23 crore has been paid to Ashwani Kumar. Another Rs13,49,000 have been demanded by Abhishek Manu Singhvi in a case, which is not released and under consideration. No payment was made to Manish Tiwari as per record of the Home Department.
“Prima facie, it appears that favors were given to some people as all these appointed advocates were associated with the Congress. It has also come to light that prescribed rules and procedure was not followed in the appointment of senior advocates as permission was not sought from Haryana AG office and verbal permission of former Chief Minister was given to appoint the advocates in some cases,” said Capt. Abhimanyu. He also informed the house that there are 85 law officers at the disposal of Prosecution Department, Haryana.