Harish Salve (Marathi:???? ?????) is an Indian lawyer, who specializes in constitutional, commercial and taxation laws. He primarily practices at the Supreme Court of India, but also appears in various High Courts and in international arbitration, sometimes as counsel and other times as an adjudicator. He served as the Solicitor General of India from 1 November 1999 to 3 November 2002. India Today magazine ranked him 43rd in India's 50 Most powerful people of 2017 list.
Video Harish Salve
Background and family
He was born in Marathi family. Harish Salve is the son of N. K. P. Salve, who was a chartered accountant and a prominent politician of the Indian National Congress party. His mother, Ambriti Salve, was a doctor. His grandfather, P.K. Salve, was a successful criminal lawyer and his great-grandfather (father of P.K. Salve) was a munsif (subordinate judge). He is married to Meenakshi and has two daughters, Saaniya and Sakshi. He has one sister, Arundati. His family is from Chhindwara in Madhya Pradesh state.
He is fond of music and is a passionate piano player. Salve said he would like to teach at Oxford University one day. He counts Subhash Chandra of Zee Network and Naresh Goyal of Jet Airways amongst his close friends.
Maps Harish Salve
Career
Salve was qualified as a Chartered accountant and practising Chartered accountancy in taxation before qualifying as a lawyer and moving to the legal profession. He was inspired by Nani Palkhivala, an eminent tax lawyer from Mumbai.
He began his legal career in 1980 at J. B. Dadachandji & Co first as an intern and later as a full-time lawyer. During this time, he assisted Palkhivala in the Minerva Mills case (case citation: AIR 1980 SC 1789). Salve was later designated as a Senior Counsel by the Delhi High Court.
Salve worked with former Attorney General, Soli Sorabjee from 1980-1986. He declined to be nominated for a second 3-year term due to "personal reasons" when his first term ended in November 2002. He later clarified that his wife was unhappy about him bringing work home and continuing to be worried as he watched the evening news.
Salve was appointed as Amicus Curiae by the Supreme Court in cases mostly relating to the preservation of the environment. However, in 2011, he recused himself from this position during a hearing on illegal mining, on the grounds that he had previously appeared for one or more of the parties.
In 2013, Salve was admitted to the English Bar and he subsequently joined the Blackstone Chambers.
Major cases and clients
Harish Salve argued the first Anti-Dumping case in the Supreme Court of India. He frequently represents large corporations like Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Industries Limited. He has appeared in the Krishna Godavari Basin gas dispute case against the latter's brother, Anil Ambani's Reliance Natural Resources Limited.
Other clients include the Tata Group and ITC Limited, whom he has represented on various matters. He has appeared for several Tata group companies, including for Ratan Tata himself in a privacy petition concerning the leakage and publication of the Niira Radia conversations which exposed an alleged politico-corporate crony capitalistic nexus, causing a huge scandal in late 2010 (see Radia tapes controversy).
Salve represented Vodafone in its $2.5 billion tax dispute with the Indian government. He initially lost the case in the Bombay High Court, but later won it at the Supreme Court after taking a temporary residence in London and relocating his office there to focus solely on the case. Salve has been extremely critical of the Indian government for passing a retrospective clarification to the Income Tax law in the 2012 Union Budget, which nullified the Supreme Court's decision.
Salve appeared for Bilkis Bano, a victim of the Gujarat Riots, at the behest of the National Human Rights Commission in 2003. He appeared as a defence counsel in the Aarushi-Hemraj double murder case.
In 2015, he took up the high-profile case of actor Salman Khan. The actor was earlier sentenced to five years in jail for a 2002 hit-and-run accident that left one man dead and four others injured. Senior counsel Amit Desai, a Mumbai-based lawyer replaced Salve for a short time in the Salman Khan trial. The Bombay High Court eventually suspended the sessions court decision and Salman Khan didn't go to jail for even one day. Citing failure of the prosecution to conclusively prove drunken driving charges against him, the Bombay High Court on 10 December 2015, acquitted him of all charges for the 2002 hit-and-run and drunk-and-drive case.
In May 2017, he represented India before the International Court of Justice in the Kulbhushan Jadhav case. Jadhav was sentenced to death by a Pakistani military court on charges of spying. Due to his efforts, the International Court of Justice ordered a provisional stay on Jadhav's execution until a final verdict is declared. For this case he charged only Rs. 1(INR) in legal fees.
Controversies
In February 2009, Citizens for Justice and Peace (CJP), an activist group, represented by lawyer Kamini Jaiswal, alleged that Salve was not fit to be amicus curiae in the Gujarat Riots cases due to his indifferent attitude to their complaints of a shoddy investigation by the special team.
In 2011, an article in Tehelka claimed that Salve was misusing his position as amicus curiae in the Gujarat Riots case, by simultaneously lobbying for companies with state government officials, who were part of the investigation he was overseeing for the court. The magazine's correspondent made allegations: "Can the renowned lawyer do justice to the 2002 Gujarat riot victims while referring business deals to the Narendra Modi government? Ashish Khetan has the evidence of impropriety and conflict of interest".
Later, in an interview to Khetan, Salve, while not denying any of the article's factual assertions, rejected any possibility of a quid pro quo or conflict in his role as an amicus in the case. "I am appearing against Narendra Modi and his government's misdeeds. I'm not appearing against Gujarat. If a project is good for Gujarat I will again direct it to Gujarat. If you can show that I have received one rupee from this I will leave this profession and go," said Salve in the interview, denying that he had any pecuniary interest in making recommendations on behalf of Eros Energy, a company promoted by London-based billionaire Kishore Lulla.
References
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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