NO
DEARTH OF DUMBHEADS
seems to be there at least in our country, as also in
the lawyers’ community – which includes judiciary – a la Galib’s punching remark: ‘kami nahin Galib is
duniya mein chutiyon kii, ek doondhe to sow miltea hain’ (O
Galib, no shortage of dumbheads in this world; search for one, you get a
hundred). Long back when this editor remarked on this to
a senior advocate friend that ‘Sir,
we are getting thousands such even without searching,’ he immediately responded, ‘O bhai, I am saying you can find such chutiyea
on every branch and every leaf of a tree you can see’! Something of this sort should have enveloped our
Bar Council of India and apex judiciary; otherwise one cannot see any reason in
the so-called practice verification rules framed by the former and not
forthwith stayed by the latter. The same applies to the Madras High Court which
recently usurped drastic disciplinary powers over the ‘erring advocates’, with
powers to immediately stop their right to practice even as an interim measure
though there is contempt jurisdiction to deal with emergent situations and also
such thing as a State Bar Council to look into complaints against ‘erring’
advocates and the Court could have been wiser and more tolerant to act as a
forum of appeal/supervision in such matters. The former this editor holds a more
drastic curtailment of the rights of advocates, with unwarranted, humiliating
restrictions imposed, right in the face of law and with ridiculous treatment of
unexplained classes of advocates. E.g., an advocate enrolled after 2010 would
be able to flaunt his state bar council enrollment certificate as his ‘practice verification certificate’ but all other long-standing members of the same
fraternity – even
if they be enrolled in the 1950s but not fortunate enough to have been
designated senior advocates or were more self-respecting and dignified to
refuse to apply for such honorary slots which should invariably be awarded by
the superior Courts suo motu or on
recommendation of Bar Councils or Advocates Associations but never on application
by individual lawyers – have to undergo all the embarrassing process
of compulsory application, payment of Rs. 250/- to 500/- fee, etc. to get a
certificate of verification of practice which appears nowhere in the Advocates
Act even. These
Black Rules
framed by the Bar Council of India, by no means an
adequately representative body in a federal polity, should be thrown out lock,
stock and barrel and this editor suggests the advocate community should seriously
protest and agitate to that end. §§§
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