Know About Legal Luminaries & Eminent Jurists – Harish Salve

Early Life & Academics

• Harish Salve's father N. K. P. Salve was a famous politician and member of the Congress party.

• His mother, Ambriti Salve, was a medical practitioner. His grandfather, P.K. Salve, was a prominent criminal lawyer and his great-grandfather (father of P.K. Salve) was a subordinate judge. Harish married to Meenakshi and has two daughters, Saaniya and Sakshi.

• The family belong to the Christians community. The family is originally from Chhindwara in Madhya Pradesh state, but are of Maharashtrian and fluent in the Marathi language.

• Salve certified as a Chartered Accountant and worked as CA specifically in tax laws before becoming a lawyer and switching to the legal profession. He was motivated by Nani Palkhivala, a prominent tax lawyer of India.

• His legal career began in 1980 as an intern under J. B. Dadachandji & Co first as an intern and later as an advocate. During this tenure, he assisted Adv Nani Palkhivala in the Minerva Mills case. Mr Salve got designated as a Senior Advocate by the Delhi High Court.

• Salve also worked under Ex-Attorney General, Soli Sorabjee between 1980 to 1986.

• Salve was appointed as an Amicus Curiae by Hon'ble Supreme Court in cases mostly relating to the environmental laws. In 2011, he released himself from this position in mid of a hearing on illegal mining, because he had earlier appeared for one or more of the parties. 

• In 2013, Salve was registered to the English Bar, and he subsequently joined the Blackstone Chambers.

Notable Cases

• Harish Salve appeared and argued the first Anti-Dumping case in the Supreme Court of India. He represented large corporations like Ambani's Reliance Industries Limited in big and prominent cases like the Krishna Godavari Basin gas dispute case against the latter's brother is the main Anil Ambani's Reliance Natural Resources Limited.

• Salve's other noteworthy clients include the Tata Group and ITC Ltd. whom he has represented on various matters. He has argued and represented several Tata group companies, including 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 massive scandal in late 2010. He appeared for ITC's famous 803 cr excise matter as well as several other matters successfully.

• Salve argued for Vodafone in its $2.5 billion tax dispute case with the Indian government. He primarily lost the case in the Bombay High Court. Still, He later won it at the Supreme Court after taking a temporary residence in London and relocating his office there to focus on the case solely.

• 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. "I think this is morally obnoxious," said Salve in an interview, adding "This is waging war on foreign investment. If a client asked me 'should I invest in India today?' I would say 'no'."

• Harish Salve appeared for Bilkis Bano, a victim of the Gujarat Riots, at the behest of the National Human Rights Commission in 2003.

Accomplishment 

• In 2009, India Today magazine ranked him the 18th most powerful person in the country.

• In the year 2015, He represented 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. Ever since Mr Salve took up the case, there's been speculation as to for how many days will the actor stay in jail. 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 the failure of the prosecution to prove drunken driving charges against him conclusively, the Bombay High Court on Thursday, 10 December 2015 acquitted him of all charges in the 2002 hit-and-run and drunk-and-drive case that killed one and injured four persons.

• In 2017, he represented India in ICJ in the Kulbhushan Jadhav case. Jadhav has been sentenced to death by a Pakistani military court on charges of spying.

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