BCI smarting under failure to ban our lawyers: Congress

NEW DELHI: Bar Council of India’s move to ban lawyer MPs and MLAs who have signed the proposed impeachment motion against the Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra from appearing in court is part of a concerted move against Congress lawyer-parliamentarians, some party leaders allege.

“The fact is very simple. Some BCI officebearers — widely known as foot-soldiers of BJP establishment — first tried to get all Congress-affiliated lawyers banned from practicing law by bringing a proposal that MPs should not practice. That push was dismissed, so the same characters, smarting under the dismissal, now say Congress MPs, who signed the impeachment motion should not appear before the CJI’s court,” a Congress MP said on condition of anonymity.

He said the proposed ban is arbitrary “especially given the tradition of both lawyers and judges voluntarily recusing from matters where they are personally involved”. “BCI officebearers are virtually lame duck as their tenures are almost over,” a Congress leader said. Meanwhile, Congress, as a strategy, has not made all its legal luminaries in Parliament sign the impeachment motion proposal, keeping some for backup legal strategy, people in the know said.


For instance, when Kapil Sibal may have signed the proposed motion, Abhishek Singhvi may not have signed, even though both are on board with Congress move, they said. Similarly, Vivek Tankha and P Chidambaram may not have signed together.

Since only a minimum of 50 signatories needed for moving impeachment motion, the Congress effort has also been to reserve enough space for MPs of other like-minded Opposition parties to sigh as well to make it a “collective move”.