Bar, Bench & Litigation

The Bar Council of India (BCI) chairman Manan Kumar Mishra has published a lengthy and detailed call for a strike on the BCI’s website earlier today.

After the apex court in September 2016 took suo motu notice of former Amity Law School, IP University, student Sushant Rohilla’s suicide, the case was transferred to the Delhi high court March 2017 to be decided on merits, where where progress has been slow.

It’s perhaps not enough of the transparency that the systems needs, but it’s an important step in that direction: once judges get used to a camera staring at them without adverse repercussions (and possibly even benefits, in stop the worst of lawyer theatrics and occasional riot-like behaviour in court rooms), we may even get audio recording, and, eventually maybe, full access to live feeds from courts...

The Delhi high court has designated new senior counsel, including, as long expected, Chander Lall and Akhil Sibal.

The pay hike would take apex and high court judges roughly back to the levels they had been paid in 1957 (adjusted for inflation), according to an analysis of decreasing salaries we had published in Mint in 2015 with Alok Prasanna Kumar (see graphic above).

Bar Council of India (BCI) chairman Manan Kumar Mishra has called for a nationwide lawyers’ strike on 31 March after meeting with Delhi bar associations, Live Law reported Mishra as saying yesterday.

The Law Commission, headed by chairman and former Supreme Court judge Justice BS Chauhan, has released its draft Advocates Act (Amendment) Bill 2017, including proposals by the Bar Council of India (BCI) and other stakeholders after the Commission was tasked by the Supreme Court to look at the BCI’s failure to do its statutory duty of regulating the profession.

And here’s one of the problems with the opaque collegium and judiciary, which rarely if ever officially confirms anything to journalists, leaving reporting on the bench to often be sourced on hints and whispers.

Bar Council of India (BCI) chairman Manan Kumar Mishra wrote to the Law Commission yesterday, withdrawing the BCI resolution that had recommended a ban on lawyer strikes and heavy fines for professional misconduct, after possibly up to 4,000 lawyers marched to the BCI office demanding Mishra’s resignation.

The Delhi Bar Association (DBA), in what it claims would be a delegation of “thousands of lawyers”, plans to march from Rohini district court to the Bar Council of India (BCI) office tomorrow (23 March) demanding the resignation of BCI chairman Manan Kumar Mishra over Mishra’s resolution that seeks to fine lawyers heavily for professional misconduct.

Bar Council of India (BCI) chairman Manan Kumar Mishra has posted an update on his official Facebook page threatening that “lawyers will come on roads” if the Law Commission were to recommend that a new regulator should handle disciplinary complaints against advocates.

dated: now

100 cops, led by the West Bengal police chief, are currently at the doors of Calcutta high court Justice CS Karnan to enforce the Supreme Court’s arrest warrant against him for contempt of court, reported NDTV, after Karnan yesterday sent another letter to the seven most senior apex court judges claiming Rs 14 crore in compensation from them for having “disturbed my mind and my normal life”.

A petition filed by advocate Ashwini Kumar Upadhyay in the apex court is arguing that legislators should cease practising law because it gives rise to conflict between their duty to client and to the constitution, seeking to extend the restriction that exists on public servants and judges to carry out professions to elected parliamentarians, reported The Hindu:

Senior counsel Dushyant Dave, writing in The Wire, has criticised a number of recent decisions of the Supreme Court regarding judicial elevations and transfers, for having been as opaque (as ever) and having missed out on obvious candidates, suggesting that executive pressure scuppered the elevations of several judges who’d handed down decisions the government wouldn’t have liked.

The Supreme Court collegium has finally completed its year-long-awaited draft of the memorandum of procedure (MOP), which would govern how judges are appointed in future, reported the The Times of India’s Dhananjay Mahapatra earlier today: