Information Commissioner Sridhar Acharyulu - the former registrar of Nalsar Hyderabad who had earlier this year also slammed the Bar Council of India (BCI) hard in an order and an editorial for being in ‘major breach’ of its obligations under the Right to Information (RTI) Act, said in his order against the Delhi bar council that:
If a client complains against the professional misconduct of advocate, the bar council has a duty to examine it and to pronounce its decision not just to the complainant. Such a decision has to be in there public domain. Transparency requirement does not allow Bar Council of Delhi to keep its decisions secret…
The Commission agrees with the justifiable contention of the appellant and directs the Bar Council of Delhi to report/publish the cases of professional misconduct, both proved and not proved, at regular intervals or as and when the decision was taken in compliance of Section 4 (1) of RTI Act in their official website or journal or by any other means of publication convenient to it…
Indeed, the monopoly conferred on the legal profession by Parliament is coupled with a responsibility - a responsibility towards the people, especially the poor…
If not people should know action against him. Right to know of the people arises out of this responsibility of Bar Council…
Bar Council should understand the purport of above referred judicial pronouncements is properly understood, the Bar Council has to publish these reports because generally the entire people are positively affected by the good conduct to some extent and harmfully affected by misconduct of the advocates, and if the Bar Council punishes them or brings out genuineness of service, it will neutralize the impact.
For that purposes it has to publish the reports of the disciplinary proceedings.
Comments
Not quite 24 hours since last story though, more like 16 - the time keeper on the frontpage is off alas, need to fix that. :)
Put that possibility in the context of lawyers in India not being able to advertise their services, or defend themselves appropriately within this framework of disclosure of the complaint.
So any measure involving disclosure of information should be fair and balanced, allowing the lawyer to defend himself/herself, at the same time the complaints should be seriously investigated and followed up on, to weed out unscrupulous lawyers and expose false complainants. Under that context, full disclosure might be fair.
I think a system that could be workable is if disposed of complaints including the decision and defence were published in entirety (even those found innocent).
While a complaint is pending, there needs to be a proper case status system, even if complaints themselves are not available to the public, to avoid spurious cases given publicity, etc.
However, the prerequisite to such a system working would be speedy and impartial disposal by bar councils, which is currently not happening.
From that perspective, agree that complete and full disclosure might be best, because that would give the lawyers an incentive to get cases cleared quickly rather than delaying them indefinitely.
There has to be some accountability to the system...