By the Court.—The appellant contemner, a practising lawyer of this Court who on an earlier occasion also held the office of the Secretary, Allahabad High Court Bar Association, has been charged for having committed ex-facie contempt by a learned Single Judge of this Court giving rise to this appeal. The division bench hearing the appeal found several issues worth reference as a result whereof Hon’ble the Chief Justice constituted this Full Bench to hear and dispose of the same.

2. A specific oral prayer was made for deciding the question of maintainability of the instant appeal, which is also one of the questions referred. It was urged by the learned Counsel that the said question be decided before taking up the contempt matter itself. The prayer was accepted by us in view of the sequence of the proceedings which we would prefer to mention at the out set, before traversing the specifics of the incident, and the arguments advanced thereon.

3. Sri V.C. Misra, Senior Advocate and coincidently the President of the Bar Association for the contemner, as well as the contemner in person and Sri A.C. Tripathi learned standing Counsel, have advanced their submissions covering arguments ranging over a wide canvas both on facts and law, which we shall presently refer to.

4. Hon’ble Mr. Justice Vinod Prasad the learned Single Judge who was presiding in Court No. 47, after recording the incident which took place inside the Court room between 10.07 A.M. and 10.16 A.M. on 10.12.2007, drew proceedings of ex-facie contempt against the appellant by framing charges and simultaneously issued a direction to send her to jail. The order recites taking cognizance of the matter under Section 15 of the Contempt of Courts Act, 1971 (hereinafter referred to as the 1971 Act) and directs the matter to be placed before the concerned Bench dealing with criminal contempt. The contemner preferred the instant appeal against the above mentioned order on the same day, which, under orders of the Hon’ble the Chief Justice, was placed before another Division Bench presided over by Dr. B.S. Chauhan, J. The said Bench proceeded to pass orders putting the order of the learned Single Judge directing judicial custody of the appellant in abeyance, with a further rider that the appellant is restrained from appearing in the High Court except in her contempt case.

5. The appellant appears to have been set at liberty on the same day i.e. 10.12.2007 and on the following day i.e. 11.12.2007, the appellant moved an application before the learned Single Judge tendering her apology. The learned Single Judge passed orders thereon, placing the said application for consideration before the concerned Bench, as in his opinion once the matter had been sent before the appropriate bench, the application was also to be considered by the same bench. The application appears to have been again taken up by the Division Bench hearing the instant appeal on which a detailed order was passed on 11.12.2007 itself, placing the matter before the Hon’ble the Chief Justice for constituting a Larger Bench of not less than five Hon’ble Judges to opine on the issues referred to therein, and the interim order was continued. The order passed by the Division Bench dated 11.12.2007 pointedly referred questions which in the opinion of the Division Bench, had arisen in view of the incident which were subject matter of contempt and also issues which emanated as a consequence of the said incident, which were of general importance including the alleged unruly behaviour of a large number of lawyers who engaged themselves in a ruckus totally disrupting the proceedings of all the Courts.

6. The contemner moved before the Apex Court against all the aforesaid four orders passed by the learned Single Judge and the Division Bench on 10.12.2007 and 11.12.2007 respectively. All the four special leave to appeals (Cr.) SLP Nos. 582-585 of 2008 were filed simultaneously and we have been apprised of the proceedings of the