Point of Law : Practice and Procedure - Misconduct - Court will not be prompted to act as a result of an easy irritability. Much rather, it shall take a noetic look at conspectus of features and be guided by a constellation of constitutional and other considerations when it chooses to use, or desist from using, its power of contempt.

JUDGMENT :

Harish Tandon. J

1. The petitioner is a practising advocate of this Court and have taken out this Public Interest Litigation espousing the cause of four members of the Bar Council of West Bengal who protested against the letter dated 25.6.2021 issued by the Chairman of the said Bar Council raising grievance against the Chief Justice (Acting) in discharging his administrative duties and making it public in different medias having an impact on the impartiality of the Judicial System and partition attitude having shown to selected class of the litigation. The foundation of the present PIL is that the Chairman has used the official letterhead of the Bar Council and percolating his own views which cannot be regarded as the views of the collective members of the Bar Council and such action is inflagrant violation of the statutory provision and the rules governing the said Bar Council amounting to misconduct within the sweep of the aforesaid statutory provision.

2. Both the letters of the Respondent no. 2 and dissenting four members of the Petitioner no. 1 are annexed to this application and the mandamus is sought, upon the Respondent no. 1 to initiate disciplinary proceedings for professional misconduct under the Advocates Act, 1961 and the Rules framed thereunder.

3. The letter of the Respondent no. 2 would evince several decisions of the Chief Justice (Acting) in distribution and allotment of selective cases either in contravention to the Appellate Side Rules or in partition way which does not percolate a message to the common people that his actions are impartial, fair and in consonance with the well settled principles of statutory procedure.

4. The matter is assigned to this Bench by the Chief Justice (Acting) obviously for the reason that the nature of the pleadings in the said application is not suggestive of the matter to be taken by the regular PIL Bench in which he is one of the constituents thereof.

5. The Counsel appearing for the respondent took a preliminary objection on the maintainability of the instant proceeding at the instance of the present petitioner espousing the cause of four dissenting members of the Bar Council and the relief claimed thereunder. According to Mr. Chowdhury, learned Advocate there is a fatal defect in the instant application more particularly, the relief adumbrated in Clause (e) of the prayer portion is unconnected and unrelated with the pleadings made therein. The learned Advocate for the petitioner reacted to such submission and contended that it is a ministerial defect having no impact on the main relief claimed therein and, therefore, the leave can be granted to the petitioner to omit/delete such relief from the prayer portion. It is no doubt true that prayer (e) to the petition has no nexus with the pleading and, therefore, deletion does not have any negative impact on the other reliefs claimed therein. There is no fetter on the part of the Court to permit the petitioner to abandon/delete one of the prayer therein which has no co-relation with the pleading nor such abandonment would render the other reliefs meaningless.

6. The other point which is projected by the respondent on the plea of demur is that the four dissenting members being the lawyers themselves can ventilate their grievance and cannot satisfy the conditions required to maintain the Public Interest Litigation.

7. We invited the Councils to address us on the merit of the instant application keeping the point of maintainability open.

8. The learned Advocate appearing for the petitioner submits that the letter of the Respondent no. 2 is repository of his own view which cannot be regarded as the view of the collective members of the Bar Council and, therefore, he has misused his Office and exposed himself within the definition of a misconduct. It is further submitted that meeting of the members of the Bar Council was not called for nor there was a resolution taken in this regard which would be reflected from the letter of the f