For the first time in the Supreme Court of India’s history, an advocate with over 70% visual disability, N Visakhamurthy, has passed the Advocate on Record examination.
It is worth noting that Advocate Visakhamurthy passed the AoR exam in his first attempt.
Visakhamurthy stated that this accomplishment was made possible not only by his own efforts, but also by the contributions of Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud, Attorney General of India R Venkataramani, and the Supreme Court Registrar General.
“My earlier two requests for scribes was rejected by the Supreme Court of India since the rule is to have someone who does not possess law degree and is also not knowledgeable of legal affairs. So in my third request, Semmozhi, a candidate in her class 12 was my scribe,” he remarked.
Advocate Visakhamurthy also stated that he and the scribe were assigned to a separate room for the exam, where he dictated the answers and the scribe wrote them, all under the supervision of the Supreme Court’s Registrar.
Interestingly, Visakamurthy had also approached the Supreme Court in 2022, requesting that appropriate guidelines be developed for people with visual impairments who wish to take the AoR exam.
A bench of Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul and Abhay Oka had dismissed the petition with a direction to the Supreme Court of India to examine the prayer and communicate a decision as soon as possible so that the candidate can appear for the examination.
Visakhamurthy expressed hope that more disabled lawyers will write the AoR exam in the future.
However, he stated that the exam pattern should be changed to be “disabled friendly” because it was inconvenient for someone like him.
“The exam pattern is not for someone with visual impairment, especially papers like drafting etc in which you have to dictate. An open-book examination is also a closed book examination for us. For some of the papers, it was very difficult to explain the format to someone who is not familiar with the subject at all. Additionally only an hour was granted for me and a special correction request was also not met with,” the lawyer pointed out.
Advocate Visakhamurthy also passed the Civil Services Examination administered by the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) in 2018 and was later appointed as an additional government advocate in the Supreme Court’s central agency section.
Due to his visual impairment, the lawyer was unable to join the service and was reassigned to the position of assistant legal advisor at Shastri Bhawan.
He was then given the green light to join the central agency section in 2021.
