Supreme Court: In a contempt petition filed by Advocates/petitioners against the office bearers of Bharatpur Bar Association, Rajasthan, accused of obstructing the work of lawyers who stayed away from strikes against ‘Legal Aid Defence Counsel Scheme’, the division bench of Dr DY Chandrachud and PS Narasimha, JJ. has closed the contempt of court proceedings against the Bar Association.
The legal aid services authority had introduced a ‘Legal Aid Defence Counsel Scheme’ for Bharatpur district. As per which the lawyers were to be engaged full time to exclusively work to provide legal aid to persons accused or convicted of crimes. Lawyers in Bharatpur protested against the scheme when the recruitment process for the scheme was initiated. The petitioner, however, continued working under the scheme and did not participate in the protest. Thus, the petitioners were issued show cause notice for opposing and weakening the movement. Further, they were suspended. Thereafter, the petitioners approached the Supreme Court seeking initiation of contempt of court proceedings against the Bharatpur Bar Association.
The Court was informed by the elected body of the Bharatpur Bar Association stated that the petitioners and other members of the Bar have been reinstated to the membership of the Association. Further, an undertaking is tendered to the Court that there shall be no obstruction on either the petitioners or similarly situated members of the Bar acting as legal defense counsel and in pursuing their avocation or profession.
Thus, the Court said that it is not expedient in the interest of justice to pursue the exercise of the contempt jurisdiction any further. However, the Bench said that it will take recourse to the coercive arm of law, if any such incident occurs in the future. The Bench also warned that there shall be no impediment in the work of legal defense counsel.
[Purnaprakash Sharma v. Yashwant Singh Faujdar, 2023 SCC OnLine SC 839, Order dated 10-07-2023]
Advocates who appeared in this case :
For Petitioner(s): Advocate Sunita Yadav, Advocate-On-Record Abhigya Kushwah, Advocate Pradeep Kumar Dubey, Advocate Siddharth Rajkumar Murarka, Advocate Shailendra Mani Tripathi, Advocate Rahul Kumar, Advocate Manisha;
For Respondent(s): Advocate-On-Record Anuj Bhandari, Advocate Dr. Ram Sankar, Advocate Anjul Dwivedi, Advocate Krishna Pandey, Advocate T S Nanda Kumar, Advocate Anand Kumar V, Advocate Aditya Kishore Tyagi, Advocate Jai Singh G, Advocate Rv Shaarumathi, Advocate Sujatha Bagadhi, Advocate Puneet Jain, Advocate Christi Jain, Advocate Yogit Kamat, Advocate Harsh Jain, Advocate Umang Mehta, Advocate Akriti Sharma, Advocate Mann Arora, Advocate-On-Record Pratibha Jain.
