AJAYINDER SANGWAN AND ORS. versus BAR COUNCIL OF DELHI & ORS. on 5 February 2018

594

SUPREME COURT REPORTS[2018] 1 S.C.R. 594

[2018] 1 S.C.R.

AAJAYINDER SANGWAN AND ORS.

v.

BAR COUNCIL OF DELHI & ORS.

(Transferred Case (Civil) No. 126 of 2015)

BFEBRUARY 05, 2018

[R. K. AGRAWAL AND ABHAY MANOHAR SAPRE, JJ.]

Advocates – State Bar Councils – Elections:

Bar Council of Tamil Nadu and Puducherry – ApplicationsCfiled by the applicants contending that Advocate General for theState of Tamil Nadu, has expressed apprehension on his ability toconduct free and fair elections to the State Bar Council of TamilNadu and Puducherry – However, Bar Council of India (BCI) statedthat the Tribunal/Committees have been constituted to oversee theelections to be held by the respective State Bar Councils – Held:DCommittee consisting of retired Chief Justice/Judges of various HighCourts has been constituted by BCI and entrusted to look into theaffairs of the elections to the said State Bar Councils – No groundto constitute any another Committee in the place of Committee soconstituted.EBar Council of Kerala – Applications by advocates practicing EBar Council of Kerala – Applications by advocates practicingin Kerala seeking impleadment as also modification of the electionschedule finalized by BCI on the ground that the day of electionthough being Sunday, is a festival day celebrated in the State andthus, it would not be possible for the majority of the voters to casttheir vote – Held: On special facts and circumstances of the case,Fthe date of election for Bar Council of Kerala is pre-poned –However, rest of the election schedule, as finalized by BCI, willremain the same.

Bar Council of Maharashtra & Goa – Applications seekingdirection to BCI and the Bar Council of Maharashtra & Goa toGpermit the advocates of these States, who are on the electoral rolls,to cast their vote at New Delhi as they have settled in Delhi for thepurpose of legal practice – Held: Election schedule having alreadybeen finalized, there is no ground to permit the applicants or theadvocates practicing at New Delhi to cast their votes at New Delhiinstead of their respective States.H

Bar Council of Rajasthan – Application filed by Bar Councilof Rajasthan seeking rescheduling of the date of election from28.03.2018 to 05.04.2018 on the ground that the Rajasthan HighCourt has holidays from 24.03.2018 to 01.04.2018 and all themembers practicing in the High Court would not be able to exercisetheir franchise owing to such holidays – Held: No ground found todefer the date of election on the pretext of holidays as it would notbe proper to reschedule the election already fixed.

Bar Council of Delhi – Applicant’s name not included in theelectoral roll – Application seeking direction to Bar Council of Delhito include his name in the electoral list – Held: Applicant did notprovide the copies of the original documents as a result of whichhis name was not included in the electoral roll – No ground madeout for directing the Bar Council of Delhi to include the name ofthe applicant in the electoral roll.

Bar Council of Andhra Pradesh – Application seekingdirection to the Andhra Pradesh Bar Council and Telangana StateBar Council to conduct election as per the schedule declared bySupreme Court – Held: BCI has fixed elections schedule for theState of Andhra Pradesh – However, there is no mention of theelection schedule for the State of Telangana – The Bar Council ofTelangana has not yet come into existence and therefore, the electionin the State Bar Council of Telangana has not been fixed – Noreason found to direct the BCI to hold election for the State BarCouncil of Telangana.

CIVIL ORIGINAL JURISDICTION: Transferred Case (Civil)No. 126 of 2015.

Under Article 32 of the Constitution of India.

Vikramjeet Banerjee, Rajiv Dutta, Manan Kumar Misra, MahabirSingh, V. S. Giri, Sr. Advs, Ramesh Babu M. R., Anantha NarayanaM.G., Gaurav Agarwal, S. Moh. Haneef, Piyush Choudhary, Satya Mitra,J. S. Rawat, Ghanshyam Joshi, Ms. Pratibha Jain, Tanuj Agarwal (ForM/S. Parekh & Co.), Ajainder Sangwan, Vivek Narayan Sharma,Siddharth Mahajan, Raj Kumar Sharma, S. N. Sharma, S. K. Sharma,Deepak Sehrawat, Tarunesh Kumar, Arun Rathi, C. P. Singh, SanjaySingh, Shubham Awasthi, Ms. Sweety Chattopadhyay, Rohan Sharma,Ms. Rishina Parashar, Irfan Firdous, Kunal Chopra, Anirudh Kumar, V.P. Singh, Narendra Singh, Dhan Singh, Pradeep Kumar Sharma, Sriram A

B

C

D

E

F

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H

AP., Ms. Khushbu Jain, Vishnu Shankar M.S., Ms. Athira G.Nair, AnkurS. Kulkarni, Ardhendumauli Kumar Prasad, Ms. Taruna ArdhendumauliPrasad, Nirmal Kumar Ambastha, Namit Saxena, Ms. Anjul Dwivedi,Ms. Gunwant Dara, Rajesh Ranjan, M. K .Maroria, Mrs. Sarla Chandra,Sachin Patil, Praveen Agrawal, Gagan Gupta, H. Chandra Sekhar,Ashwani Kumar Dubey, Sanjeev Kr. Baliyan, Purvish Jitendra Malkan,BMs. Dharita Malkan, Ms. Deepa Gorasia, Bhaskar Singh,.Ms. Madhusmita Bora, Venkateswara Rao Anumolu, Mrs. Nandini Gore,Parmanand Pandey, Sudarshan Singh Rawat, Ms. Poli Kataki,R. Balasubramanian, Gaurav Sharma, Ms. Amandeep Kaur, DhawalMohan, Prateek Bhatia, Rameshwar Prasad Goyal, Ms. K. V. BharathiCUpadhyaya, M. Shoeb Alam, Ms. Fauzia Shakil, Ujjwal Singh, MojahidKarim Khan, Mohinder Jit Singh, Prang Newmai, Ms. Slomita Rai,E. C. Agrawala, Himinder Lal, Shibashish Misra, Mritunjay Kumar Sinha,Subhasish Mohanty, Mohammed Sadique T.A., Amol B. Karande, VijayKumar, Gopal Prasad, Anupam Lal Das, M/S. Venkat Palwai LawAssociates, Ms. Sneha Kalita, Vikas Upadhyay, Vidit Monga, Ms. AparnaDJha, Dr. Kailash Chand, Jogy Scaria, Ms. Beena Victor, RakeshK. Sharma, S. S. Shamshery, Amit Sharma, Ankit Raj, Ms. Indira Bhakar,Ms. Ruchi Kohli, Vipin Kumar, Baldev Atreya, Deepak Goel, KamalKumar Pandey, Aditya Singh, Pijush K. Roy, Ms. Kakali Roy, Rajan K.Chourasia, Ms. Lalita Kohli, Abhishek Swarup (For M/S. Manoj SwarupEand Co.), Dr. Manish Singhvi, Shailja Nanda Mishra, Satyendra Kumar(For Irshad Ahmad), Sudhanshu S. Choudhari, Ms. Radhika Chaturvedi,Hitesh Kumar Sharma, S. K. Rajora (For Ms. Manju Jetley), Mrs. SantoshSingh, Ms. Malini Poduval, Anurag Dubey, Ajit Kumar Pathak, SanchitMaheshwari, S. R. Setia, Ms. Kamakshi S. Mehlwal, Y. Raja GopalaRao, Kunal Chatterji, Ms. Maitrayee Banerjee, Rajeev Singh, AnjaniFKumar Mishra, Ms. Christi Jain, Harvinder Chowdhury, M/S. LemaxLawyers & Co., Vishal Khattar, Ms. C. Rubavathi, M. A. Chinnasamy,K. Ethiraj, P. V. Dinesh, A. V. Rangam, Buddy A. Ranganadhan, SunilFernandes, Ms. Nupur Kumar, Harsh V. Surana, Gaurav Agarwal, KunalSingh, Pukhrambam Ramesh Kumar, Ms. Rahat Sharma, Shishir Pinaki,GRajiv Kumar Sinha, Sumi P. S., Vibhakar Mishra, K. K. Gautam, UmeshP. Wadhwani, Deependra Kumar Pathak, Nischal Kumar Neeraj,Suvendu Suvasis Dash, K. V. Mohan, Atul Jha, Sandeep Jha,Dharmendra Kumar Sinha, Advs. for the appearing parties.

The Order of the Court was delivered byHR. K. AGRAWAL, J. 1. A bunch of Interlocutory Applications AJAYINDER SANGWAN AND ORS. v. BAR COUNCIL OFDELHI & ORS. [R. K. AGRAWAL, J.]

for clarification/impleadment/direction/intervention/ appropriate orders/modification, in the lead matter, has been filed after the order passed bythis Court on 14.12.2017, is being disposed of by this common order.

2. Heard learned counsel for the respective parties.

IA Nos. 14049, 14055, 14059 and 14062 of 2018

3. The contention of learned counsel for the applicants is thatlearned Advocate General for the State of Tamil Nadu, who is ex-officiomember of the State Bar Council, has written a letter dated 15.01.2018expressing apprehension on his ability to conduct free and fair electionsto the State Bar Council of Tamil Nadu and Puducherry. It was alsobrought to the attention of this Court the order dated 23.01.2018 passedby a Division Bench of the Madras High Court wherein the court hadcome to the conclusion for appointment of a neutral committee of retiredJudges either of the Supreme Court of India or of the Madras HighCourt to oversee the election. However, the court did not pass any orderas the matter was pending before this Court.

4. In the application for directions filed on behalf of the BCI dated23.01.2018, it has been stated that the Tribunal/Committees have beenconstituted to oversee the elections to be held by the respective StateBar Councils. So far as the elections to be held for the Bar Council tothe State of Tamil Nadu and Puducherry is concerned, the Committeeconstituted by the BCI consists of the following persons, namely, Hon’bleMr. Justice V.K. Gupta, former Chief Justice of the Jharkhand HighCourt, Hon’ble Mr. Justice T. Sudanthiram, former Judge, Madras HighCourt and Hon’ble Mr. Justice V.D. Gyani, former Judge, MadhyaPradesh High Court. The aforementioned Committee has been entrustedto look into the affairs of the elections to the State Bar Council of TamilNadu and Puducherry. The Committee consists of retired Chief Justice/Judges of various High Courts and we do not find any good ground toconstitute any another Committee in its place.

5. For the reasons mentioned above, the interlocutory applicationsare accordingly dismissed.

IA Nos. 9727 and 7520 of 2018

6. By these two applications, the applicants, who are practicingadvocates in the State of Kerala seek impleadment as also modificationof the election schedule finalized by the BCI.

A

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A7. In view of the application for directions filed on behalf of theBCI on 23.01.2018, the election schedule for the State of Kerala hasbeen fixed and the date of election is notified as 25.03.2018. Learnedcounsel appearing for the applicants contended that the day of electionthough being Sunday, is a festival day celebrated in the State andtherefore, it would not be possible for the majority of the voters to castBtheir vote. A request was made to pre-pone the date of election from25.03.2018 to 18.03.2018.

8. Considering the special facts and circumstances of the case,we pre-pone the date of election for Bar Council of Kerala from25.03.2018 to 18.03.2018, however, rest of the election schedule, asCfinalized by the BCI, will remain the same. The applications are disposedof accordingly.

IA Nos. 11955 and 11959 of 2018

9. By the above two applications, the applicants seek a directionDto the BCI and the Bar Council of Maharashtra & Goa to permit theadvocates of these States, who are on the electoral rolls, to cast theirvote at New Delhi. Further, all the applicants hail from Maharashtraand Goa and have settled in Delhi for the purpose of legal practice. Areference has been invited to the Resolution passed by the BCI whereinthe BCI has requested learned Secretary General of this Court to considerEproviding sufficient space to enable the advocates who are registeredwith different State Bar Councils and are on the electoral lists of therespective State Bar Councils to cast their votes at New Delhi itself.However, no response has been received by the BCI so far.

10. Owing to the election schedule having already been finalized,Fwe do not find any ground to permit the applicants or the advocates whoare practicing at New Delhi to cast their votes at New Delhi instead oftheir respective States.

11. The present application has been filed by the Bar Council ofGRajasthan seeking rescheduling of the date of election from 28.03.2018to 05.04.2018 on the ground that the Rajasthan High Court has holidaysfrom 24.03.2018 to 01.04.2018 and all the members who are practicingin the High Court would not be able to exercise their franchise owing toholidays in the Court. We do not find any good ground to defer the dateHof election on the pretext of holidays as it would not be proper for us to reschedule the election which has already been fixed for 28.03.2018.The application is, therefore, rejected.

12. By means of present application, the applicant, who is enrolledas an advocate with the Bar Council of Delhi, seeks a direction to theeffect that his name be included in the electoral list for the reason thathe had submitted all the requisite documents within time. However, wefind that the applicant had not provided the copies of the originaldocuments as a result of which his name was not included in the electoralroll.

13. We have given our thoughtful consideration to the plea raisedby the applicant. In our view, no ground has been made out for directingthe Bar Council of Delhi to include the name of the applicant in theelectoral roll. The application is rejected accordingly.

14. By means of this application, the applicant, who is practicingas an advocate and is enrolled with the Bar Council of Andhra Pradeshseeks a direction to conduct elections and direct the Andhra PradeshBar Council and Telangana State Bar Council to conduct election as perthe scheduled declared by this Court.

15. In the application for directions filed on behalf of the BarCouncil of India dated 23.01.2018, we find that the election schedule forthe State of Andhra Pradesh has been fixed by the BCI, however, thereis no mention of the election schedule for the State of Telangana. Itappears that the Bar Council of Telangana has not yet come into existenceand therefore, the election in the State Bar Council of Telangana has notbeen fixed.

16. In view of the above, in the present facts and circumstances,we do not find any reason to direct the BCI to hold election for the StateBar Council of Telangana. The application is rejected.

Divya Pandey Applications disposed of.

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