Members of the Bar have certain privileges as officers of the court, and when they are to stand due to lack of seating facilities, members of the public cannot claim any right to occupy the seating facilities available inside the court.

A delicate question is involved in this case. Can a litigant claim that he has equal right with advocates to sit on the front seats in a court room when advocates are to stand due to want of seating facilities ?

2. Facts, having a queerish tinge, are the following : Petitioner was a party in a civil suit in the court of a Munsiff. Petitioner was conducting his case without the aid of a counsel. On 16-7-1992 petitioner occupied one of the seats on the front row of the court hall. Some advocates including seniors in the Bar were standing as seats were not available for them to sit. Learned Munsiff then asked the petitioner to move out of the seat for accommodating seniors in the Bar. But petitioner declined to obey and persisted in claiming right to sit at the same place. He also told the Munsiff that without a written order he was not prepared to obey the direction of the court. Learned Munsiff treated the aforesaid conduct of the petitioner as amounting to insult or interruption intentionally caused to a judicial functionary during judicial proceedings. Thereupon he took cognizance of the offence specified in S. 228 of the Penal Code and resorted to the steps envisaged in S. 345 of the Criminal P.C. (for short 'the Code'). He asked the petitioner to show cause why he should not be punished. As there was no satisfactory explanation, learned Munsiff sentenced the petitioner to a fine of Rs. 150/-.

3. Petitioner challenges the aforesaid proceedings invoking the inherent powers of the High Court under S. 482 of the Code. Here also petitioner argued his own case without the aid of a counsel.

4. Since a decision in the case may have some implication on the rights of members of the Bar, I heard learned Advocate General, learned Director General of Prosecution, President of the Advocates' Association and senior counsel Shri T. P. Kelu Nambiar, Sri S. Vijayakumar Advocate argued as amicus curie. I express my gratitude to them for their valuable assistance. Shri Sebastian Tharakan a raw junior at the Bar also addressed arguments quite admirably.

5. On the one side of the question there is equality of status enshrined in the Constitution of India. A court of law being a public institution, every one - whether the litigant conducts the case in person or his cause is expoused by an advocate - has the right to present the cause and there shall be no discrimination. On the other side there is the special status of advocate in a court of law, being member of the Bar. The question raised in this case cannot be answered without viewing the aforesaid profiles.

6. There is no use in harping on the premise that there is no statutory provision conferring preferential right on advocates regarding seating accommodation in a court room. Contextually it is useful to bear in mind that there is no statutory provision regarding the seat of a judge in a court hall or the seat of the court officer (or bench clerk) or set for witnesses etc. It would hinge on preposterousness if a litigant claims, on the strength of equality clause, that he has a right to sit on any such seats. So, the criterion is not whether there is any statutory provision or rule.

7. Has a member of the Bar any special status in the court room ? In seeking answer to the question some understanding of what is meant by "Bar" in relation to a court of law is necessary.

8. The term "Bar" in legal parlance originated in England with the partition or bar fixes for dividing the court hall into two segments for the purpose of separating lawyers and officers of the court from suitors and other general public. (Encyclopedia Britannica Vol. 3 at page 92; also Black's Law Dictionary). Over the years the term "Bar" as connected with law, denoted a dividing line though not made of any material, but yet identifiable which separated the public from the principals of the court. The term "Bar" in a court room applied to the area impliedly reserved for the principals of the court i.e. the judge,