Selected Opinions of the Disciplinary Committees of the Bar Councils

In one line

Disciplinary committee opinions are not reported like judgments, so the way to read them is inside the Supreme Court judgments that quote them.

In exam wording: the opinions of the disciplinary committees of the Bar Councils, given under sections 35 and 36 of the Advocates Act 1961, are not published as a series of law reports; their reasoning is accessible where it is reproduced in the appellate judgments delivered under sections 37 and 38.

Say the honest thing first

MU's topic 3.8 asks for "selected opinions of the Disciplinary Committee of Bar Councils". A student who goes looking for them finds nothing, and it is worth knowing why.

A disciplinary committee is not a court of record. Its orders are not systematically reported, there is no series of volumes, and there is no comprehensive public index. What exists is: the order communicated to the parties, and the reproduction of that order, sometimes at length, in the judgment of the appellate body.

So the honest treatment of this topic is to read the committees' reasoning where the Supreme Court has set it out, and this chapter does that. It has the advantage of accuracy: the words below are the committees' own, as quoted in judgments that have been read.

How to read a disciplinary order

Every disciplinary order has three parts, and a student who can name them can analyse any of them.

The charge. What the advocate is said to have done, framed from the complaint.

The finding. Whether it is proved, and on what material.

The choice of punishment. Which of the four orders in section 35(3), and why.

Most of the interest, and most of the disagreement on appeal, is in the third. The first two are usually settled by the time the matter goes up: Chandra Shekhar Soni v. Bar Council of Rajasthan, AIR 1983 SC 1012, records that the Supreme Court will not as a general rule interfere with concurrent findings of fact of the two committees unless based on no evidence or on mere conjectures and unwarranted inferences.

Opinion one: a committee explaining a heavy punishment

From the disciplinary committee of the Bar Council of India, order dated 31 July 1999, as reproduced in Shambhu Ram Yadav v. Hanuman Das Khatry, AIR 2001 SC 2509.

The advocate had written to his client that the presiding judge accepted bribes and asked for Rs 10,000 to have the suit decided in his favour. The committee, enhancing the State Bar Council's two-year suspension, said:

"In the facts and circumstances of the case, we also heard the appellant as to the punishment since the advocate has considerable standing in the profession. He has served as advocate for 50 years and it was not expected of him to indulge in such a practice of corrupting the judiciary or offering bribe to the judge and he admittedly demanded Rs.10,000/- from his client and he orally stated that subsequently order was passed in his client's favour. This is enough to make him totally unfit to be a lawyer by writing the letter in question. We cannot impose any lesser punishment than debarring him permanently from the practice. His name should be struck off the roll of advocates maintained by the Bar Council of Rajasthan."