NEW DELHI: As the controversy arising out of letters from senior advocate and former Supreme Court Bar Association President Dushyant Dave and lawyer Prashant Bhushan on listing of cases in the apex court refuses to die down, Bar Council of India Chairman Manan Kumar Mishra on Saturday came out in support of the CJI saying that “such letters are an extra judicial mechanism of creating undue influence” and “to pressure the judiciary for getting favourable decisions for their influential clients and interests”.
The BCI chairman wrote a letter to Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud and said such letters come from few senior counsel with “political motives and commercial stakes” and urged him to ignore them.
Earlier SCBA President Adish C Aggarwala had also expressed “full faith and confidence in the neutrality and unprecedented administrative skill” of the CJI and said assignment of cases is not open to question on the judicial or administrative side.
“The attempts made through such letters clearly amount to contemptuous conduct and a mischief perpetrated to further ulterior motives and ends. The courts must tackle such attempts with iron hand. Such practice can be curbed by wholly ignoring them and ensuring that the same does not have any impact on the free and fair functioning of the existing system. It must be remembered that such letters come from a few selected quarters represented by a handful of senior counsel with political motives and for commercial stakes,” Mishra said in his letter.
“In the opinion of the Bar, such letters are sent with sinister object and prompting from influential and powerful litigants who are ready to go to any extent to gain any sort of advantage over the other members of the Bar, who are discharging their adversarial functions diligently and professionally,” the letter said.
He said the claims were made to “attract cheap publicity without an iota of truth and are completely devoid of any bona fide purpose and the purpose behind such letters is to pressure the judiciary for getting favourable decisions” for their influential clients and interests.
The BCI chairman wrote a letter to Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud and said such letters come from few senior counsel with “political motives and commercial stakes” and urged him to ignore them.
Earlier SCBA President Adish C Aggarwala had also expressed “full faith and confidence in the neutrality and unprecedented administrative skill” of the CJI and said assignment of cases is not open to question on the judicial or administrative side.
“The attempts made through such letters clearly amount to contemptuous conduct and a mischief perpetrated to further ulterior motives and ends. The courts must tackle such attempts with iron hand. Such practice can be curbed by wholly ignoring them and ensuring that the same does not have any impact on the free and fair functioning of the existing system. It must be remembered that such letters come from a few selected quarters represented by a handful of senior counsel with political motives and for commercial stakes,” Mishra said in his letter.
“In the opinion of the Bar, such letters are sent with sinister object and prompting from influential and powerful litigants who are ready to go to any extent to gain any sort of advantage over the other members of the Bar, who are discharging their adversarial functions diligently and professionally,” the letter said.
He said the claims were made to “attract cheap publicity without an iota of truth and are completely devoid of any bona fide purpose and the purpose behind such letters is to pressure the judiciary for getting favourable decisions” for their influential clients and interests.