Madras HC issues notices to Centre, Bar Council on constitution of disciplinary committee

Chennai: The Madras high court on Monday issued notices to the union government, the Bar Council of India (BCI) and the Bar Council of Tamil Nadu and Puducherry on a petition challenging the validity of section 9 of The Advocates Act, 1961

Chennai: The Madras high court on Monday issued notices to the union government, the Bar Council of India (BCI) and the Bar Council of Tamil Nadu and Puducherry on a petition challenging the validity of section 9 of The Advocates Act, 1961.

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A bench of chief justice Sanjib Banerjee and justice Senthilkumar Ramamoorthy posted the matter to appear in four weeks. Section 9 of the Act pertains to a Bar Council to constitute one or more disciplinary committees. The petition moved by advocate Karthik Ranganathan argued that these disciplinary committees should have retired judges as members and not the present system where lawyers decide on cases involving their peers.

Section 9, states, “A Bar Council shall constitute one or more disciplinary committees, each of which shall consist of three persons of whom two shall be persons elected by the Council from among its members and the other shall be a person co-opted by the Council from among advocates who possess the qualifications specified in the proviso to sub-section (2) of section 3 and who are not members of the Council, and the senior-most advocate among the members of a disciplinary committee shall be the Chairman thereof.”

The court asked for the copy of the petition to be sent to the office of the Additional Solicitor-General, R Sankara Narayanan. “Mr Rajesh Vivekanandan, learned Senior Panel Counsel, accepts notice for the first respondent. Issue notice to the respondents 2 and 3; returnable four weeks hence,” the court said in its orders.