Mr. G vs The Hon'ble Chief Justice and Judges of the High Court
Rewritten Version Notice: This is a rewritten version of the original judgment.
Court: Supreme Court of India
Case Number: Petition No. 254 of 1954
Decision Date: 27 May 1954
Coram: B.K. Mukherjea, Vivian Bose, Ghulam Hasan, B. Jagannadhadas
In this matter the petitioner, identified as Mr G, a senior advocate of the Supreme Court, instituted proceedings against the Honorable Chief Justice and the Judges of the High Court. The petition was filed on 27 May 1954 before the Supreme Court of India. The case was listed as Petition No 254 of 1954 and was presented under original jurisdiction pursuant to article 32 of the Constitution for the enforcement of fundamental rights. The bench hearing the petition comprised B K Mukherjea, Vivian Bose, Ghulam Hasan and B Jagannadhadas. The official report also records the names Das and Sudhi Ranjan as members of the bench. The citation of the judgment appears in 1954 AIR 560 and 1955 SCR 501. The statutory provision examined was section 10(2) of the Indian Bar Councils Act, 1926 (Act XXXVIII of 1926). The specific question framed was whether an order made under section 10(2) could be oral rather than written, and whether the High Court could act on its own motion under that section. The headnote of the reported judgment summarizes that an order under section 10(2) may be oral and need not be written, and that the High Court may refer a case on its own motion. For the respondents, the Attorney-General for India, M C Setalvad, appeared together with G N Joshi and P G Gokhale.
Justice Bose delivered the opinion of the Court. He noted that the present petition raised the same substantive issue that had been decided in a connected summons case whose judgment had been delivered moments earlier. The earlier judgment contained the factual background, and the present opinion therefore referred to that record. Justice Bose observed that the petition did not raise any question of violation of a fundamental right. Rather, the dispute centered on the jurisdiction of the Bar Council Tribunal and of the Bombay High Court. The petitioner’s first contention was that the proceedings before the Bar Council Tribunal were ultra vires because there was no proper order appointing the tribunal. He explained that, at an early stage of the proceedings, he had applied to both the Registrar and the Prothonotary for a copy of the order of the Chief Justice that constituted the tribunal. The Prothonotary replied that the order had been made orally. Despite this information, the petitioner submitted two written statements to the tribunal and did not challenge the oral nature of the order in those statements. He limited his objection to the argument that the order was not a judicial order and therefore was invalid. The same line of attack was pursued before the High Court. The learned High Court judges observed that the record clearly showed that the case had been referred to the Bar Council under section 10(2) and that, accordingly, a tribunal had been appointed under section 11(1) by the Chief Justice of the High Court. In his petition before this Court, the petitioner did not contest that factual description; instead, he confined his challenge to the legal validity of the order. Justice Bose concluded that the fact that the order was oral had not been contested, and that the Court could not disregard that circumstance.
The Court noted that the fact that an order had been made was not contested by Mr G, and therefore the Court could not permit Mr G to ignore that fact. The Court then examined whether an oral order satisfied the requirements of the Bar Councils Act. The Act does not prescribe any specific procedure for making such an order. Section 10(2) of the Act provides that the High Court may, of its own motion, refer any case in which it has reason to believe that an advocate has been guilty. Section 11(2) provides that the Tribunal shall consist of not fewer than three members of the Bar Council, who are to be appointed for the purpose of the inquiry by the Chief Justice. The Court agreed that some record of the order should be placed in the file, but held that the order itself need not be in writing; an oral order communicated to a proper officer of the Court was sufficient. In the present case, the Court pointed to letter No G-1003 dated 29 April 1953 from the Prothonotary to the Registrar, and letter No E-41-09/53 dated 1 May 1953 from the Registrar to the Bar Council. Office copies of these letters were retained in the files and, according to the Court, constituted an adequate record of the making of the order. The Court observed that Mr G had been supplied with copies of those letters and therefore was aware that the orders had been issued. The Court further examined the original High Court office files and found that the names of the three Tribunal members were written in the Chief Justice’s handwriting, with his initials beneath them, which the Court considered an additional record of the order’s issuance.
Having examined the material, the Court held that an order recorded in the manner described satisfied the requirements of sections 10(2) and 11(2) of the Bar Councils Act, and consequently the Tribunal had been validly appointed. The Court then addressed Mr G’s subsequent argument that no complaint had been lodged with the High Court and therefore the High Court lacked jurisdiction to refer the matter to the Tribunal. The Court rejected this argument, noting that the High Court is authorized to make a reference of its own motion under section 10(2) of the Act. The Court indicated that the merits of the matter had already been dealt with in the connected case. Accordingly, the Court dismissed the petition and made no order as to costs. The petition was dismissed.