By Siddhant Mohan, TwoCircles.net
Kulbhushan Jadhav’s case in International Court of Justice (ICJ) is being heard and in a promising move, the ICJ stayed the execution of Kulbhushan Jadhav. This decision by ICJ is a huge setback for Pakistan and moreover, it has given hope to India.
India’s is being represented in ICJ by Harish Salve, who is a senior lawyer in Supreme Court of India, and has already served Solicitor General of India for three years. But this time, Harish Salve has earned fame for charging Rs 1 as his fee. It has no doubt made him famous; otherwise it is less expected from the current tech-savvy and Whatsapp-dependent Nationalist guns of India to have ever heard of Harish Salve’s name.
But it is for sure that Salve, who has been representing Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries Limited, Tata group of companies including Ratan Tata himself, Vodafone and Salman Khan, has created a new and useless debate at least in South Asia regarding the fee of lawyers when it comes to Nation’s Pride.
Kulbhushan Jadhav’s case was going peacefully and India was moving towards a victory until BJP tried to hijack the lawyer, case and country and even tried to put the discussion as another BJP versus Congress fight. The BJP alleged that UPA government had dropped Harish Salve’s name for Khawar Qureshi in 2004 over a case with Enron. Notably, Khawar Qureshi is Pakistan’s counsel in ICJ in Kulbhushan Jadhav’s case. This allegations comes as a half truth as Indian media is hiding too many details of the same, making it to look like ‘UPA ditched National Hero Harish Salve’. The Indian government, in 2004 did not want Salve to leave the case but instead asked him to become Qureshi’s deputy, which Salve refused.
However, according to Salve and other people related to the case, Salve was planned to be the Chief Counsel in the India’s case and his ‘demotion’ was carried out in later days. And the step to demote Salve was not UPA’s sole decision, it was was recommended by Fox and Mandal, an international law firm which was working closely with Indian Government in Dabhol Power Project case.
Last week, when news outlets were impatiently running stories about injustice to Salve, Salve refused to comment on such stories. But it bothered very less to outlets and several of them were already running flashes like ‘Desh ka Dushman, Congress ka Dost?’ (India’s enemy, a friend of Congress?), to instigate and spreading the hate against Congress even more.
Moreover, terming Khawar Qureshi as ‘India’s enemy’ or ‘Terrorist’ seems to be a hurried decision for now. Because Qureshi is not just some ordinary figure who was just appeared in sessions court. In fact, Khawar Qureshi is the youngest lawyer to have appeared in the International Court of Justice and his first appearance in ICJ was way back in 1993 when he fought the case for Bosnia against a genocide case against the erstwhile Yugoslavia.
According to Chambers and Partners (2014), Qureshi is known to deliver and is particularly good at difficult cases. He is part of the team and very flexible. “As such he’s completely what the modern barrister should be like…He is a very powerful advocate who works incredibly hard and gets on top of both the legal issues and the facts,” says Chambers and Partners, an international law firm based in London with lawyers in 180 jurisdictions around the world.
The same Chambers and Partners wrote about Qureshi in 2008, “a barrister with phenomenal integrity who is effortlessly able to cross jurisdictions.” Legal 500, an international encyclopedia for law firms and lawyers wrote about Khawar Qureshi in 2006, “Solicitors identify “Khawar Qureshi’s PIL background mixed with first-rate commercial expertise. In this respect he has won further admiration for handling cases of commercial and international law elements in their entirety. His strong domestic and international profile has won him a role as treasury counsel in the UK and advisory mandates from foreign states.”
Notably, Qureshi is a Queen’s Council at Serle Court Chambers and McNair Chambers Qatar. And with the nature of cases Qureshi has fought and legal practices he has done, one could clearly say that Qureshi is not much a ‘Pakistani Lawyer’ because he was constantly presenting before international courts representing various countries other than Pakistan, UK being a major one.
The hate-mongering against Khawar Qureshi just because he has a nationality of Pakistan, is doing more harm than good. Qureshi, who is no longer representing the Jadhav’s case in ICJ, has also rubbished the media reports and allegations that he charged Euro 720,000 for representing the case. He termed it as ‘non-sense’ allegation and said, “My fees were not even 10 percent of what the Indian propaganda suggests. I cancelled another professional commitment with another government to travel to Pakistan urgently. I gave a 30% reduction on my fees besides covering the cost of two of my juniors’ fees.” By dealing more emotionally with the Salve, Qureshi and nationalism, India is stepping its foot in a more illogical zone, which if ICJ acknowledges, it will be a more open forum for Pakistan to discuss Kashmir conflict in the international court.
Not that Salve is a figure who does not have his own share of controversies. His role as amicus curiae in Gujarat Riots case was also questioned by civil rights group. In 2009, Citizens for Justice and Peace (CJP), accused Salve for being unfit to be amicus curiae in Gujarat riots case due to his attitude towards the complaints filed by CJP. In simple terms, the job of an amicus (friend of court) is to help the court with objective and impartial analysis so that justice is served and public interest prevails. In such a role, amicus Salve not only helped the Supreme Court in investigation but he also handpicked officers to be part of the Special Investigation Team.
But riots victims from Gujarat raised their concerns and complaints in the court over the role and functioning of SIT. They alleged that SIT have not gone after the top government functionaries and officials on whose orders riots were staged, but rather booked small level Police officers over the incident. For instance, an inspector was held responsible in the Gulbarg Society massacre for entire police failure while just departmental action was issued against top-ranked officials. This explains why Salve was one of the most favorable man in the eyes of the then Gujarat Government, and now Narendra Modi-led Indian Government.
Moreover, Salve was also accused of lobbying for Eros Energy in setting up a 25 MW power plant in Gujarat after investigative magazine Tehelka dug out the email exchanges between Eros Energy’s Kishore Lulla, Harish Salve and top officials of Gujarat government. CJP’s Kamini Jaiswal, who is also a Supreme Court lawyer, also accused Salve role back in 2009 as amicus curiae because beside being amicus curiae in the case, Salve was also Gujarat Government’s counsel in Ishrat Jahan’s encounter case. Seeing the light of such allegations against Salve, retired Supreme Court judge PB Sawant too raised question over Salve’s appointment as amicus curiae in Gujarat riots case.
Salve was also accused of not consulting Gujarat riot victims when it came to replacement of two SIT officers – Geeta Johri and Shivanand Jha – and moving to appointing new officers on the recommendations of SIT Chairman Raghavan.
Moreover, Salve’s career as a lawyer is not free controversies. Appearing before the court in favor of big corporate houses, politicians and film stars, Salve is said to charge Rs 10-20 lakh per court appearance. He represented bollywood star Salman Khan in the famous hit-and-run case in which Salman Khan killed a man who was sleeping on footpath. He lost Vodafone’s $ 2.5 billion tax case against Indian Government in Bombay high court but got success later in Supreme Court. The elite legacy of Salve took him to temporary residence in London to study and focus more on the Vodafone’s case.
It must be noted that the appointment of Salve for Rs 1, is not a big thing and it is not an official announcement. Various Indians have served various positions inside and outside of country over the same fee. But it is the discussion which got pace after Kulbhushan Jadhav’s case appeared in International Court of Justice. It is good that India is fighting hard to save a life of one individual, but it is more open secret that foolishness of getting into emotional zone will certainly give edge to Pakistan on certain issues. One of them Pakistan is already shouting, “Vienna convention does not applies over spies.