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Bar Council decries ban on lawyers

NEW DELHI: The Bar Council of India on Saturday said the Delhi High Court had encroached its powers as well as the State Bar Council by imposing a ban on senior advocates -- R. K. Anand and I. U. Khan -- for practising in the High Court and subordinate courts for four months.

At a press conference here on Saturday, Bar Council of India chairman Suraj Narain Prasad Sinha said: “The Delhi High Court has the power to punish the two senior advocates in the contempt proceeding initiated in the BMW case but it cannot encroach the powers of Bar Council of India. We are not concerned with the merit of the verdict against the two senior advocates.”

Mr. Sinha said the Bar Council of India was only concerned with the powers encroached by the Delhi High Court in directing the two senior advocates not to appear in the High Court and its subordinate courts for the next four months. “Section 35 of Advocates Act 1961 clearly stipulates that the State Bar Council has the power to punish advocates for professional misconduct or other misconduct. It can either convict the delinquent lawyer or acquit him.”

Criticising the one-day strike of lawyers of all four district courts on Friday over the Delhi High Court’s verdict over the decision to bar senior advocates from practicing for four months in the contempt proceeding initiated in the BMW case, Mr. Sinha said: “The strike by lawyers in Tis Hazari, Patiala House, Karkardooma and Rohini courts on Friday over the Delhi High Court’s verdict was totally uncalled for. Not only litigants had to suffer but there is also drainage of the State exchequer. The Bar Council of India is not in favour of the strike as the Supreme Court had stated that the strike is applicable only in exceptional cases.”

Speaking on the occasion, Bar Council of India vice-chairman Jai Ram Beniwal said the Delhi High Court can only impose punishment under the law but cannot interfere in the powers vested with the Bar Council of the States, which alone can take away the licence of practise of an advocate for misconduct. “If disciplinary proceedings are not concluded in one-year in the Bar Council of Delhi then the matter would automatically transfer to Bar Council of India. The Bar Council of India can then exercise original and jurisdictional powers.”

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