Supreme Court Allows Ashok Arora To Argue In Person Plea Against His Suspension As SCBA Secretary

The Supreme Court on Thursday adjourned the special leave petition filed by former Secretary of the Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA) Ashok Arora against the Delhi High Court order wherein his plea seeking a stay on his suspension from SCBA was rejected. A Bench of Justices AM Khanwilkar and BR Gavai heard the matter and allowed Arora to argue in person. However, due to audio issues, the Court adjourned the plea and it will now be heard next Tuesday. In today's hearing, Arora submitted to the Court that he wanted to argue in person. To this, the Bench responded that as Arora was an advocate of the Supreme Court, he should have been aware of the practices. "You are advocate of this Court. You know the practice. You should discharge your advocate. Don't get involved. This is not the correct procedure. If you have engaged an Advocate-on-Record, first discharge him and then address us", directed the Bench. Arora sought for permission to make a statement on the same. As the AOR agreed to make a statement for the discharge, the Court dictated an Order whereby they allowed Arora to argue. Arora then commenced his submissions and stated that the entire of sequence of events was "disgusting". "Before I go to the impugned order, I need to point out one incident in the sequence of events. They are so disgusting. The interim relief I want is that the suspension is continuing", averred Arora. He brought to the fore the issue that despite his suspension, the letterhead of the SCBA showed his name as "Hony. Secy. Ashok Arora (Under Suspension)". "This is defamatory and humiliating", noted Arora. The Bench asked Arora to take up the matter with SCBA and request them to remove the name from the letterhead. Arora then recounted the event of February 22nd – "Mr. Dave. insulted the President and the Prime Minister of India by boycotting the function organized by the Supreme Court. When this happened, a letter was signed seeking for his removal as the SCBA head. 410 people signed it." It was submitted by Arora that the Emergency General Body Meeting which had been called by him was done so according to the Rules which empowered the Secretary to call such a meeting. "Since 410 members made a request to the Secretary, citing that Dave had insulted the PM, President and foreign dignitaries, I was empowered to call the meeting", said Arora. The Bench asked Arora for the suspension notice, however, due to the audio issues, the matter could not proceed and was adjourned to next Tuesday. On November 18, a Division Bench of Justice Rajiv Sahai Endlaw and Justice Asha Menon refused to interfere with the observations of the Single Bench of Justice Mukta Gupta in its order rejecting the original plea. Earlier, while refusing to provide relief, the Single Bench of Justice Mukta Gupta had noted that Ashok Arora failed to establish a prima facie case in his favour. On May 8, the Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA) suspended its Secretary, Ashok Arora, with immediate effect after the Executive Committee (EC) took this decision in a meeting. Vide this Resolution, it was also decided that Rohit Pandey, the Assistant Secretary, will take over the roles and responsibilities of the Secretary. This development came soon after Arora had circulated a message amongst SCBA members, in an attempt to convene an Emergent General Meeting (EGM) on May 11 to discuss the removal of SCBA President, Dushyant Dave, from his post for passing a Resolution on February 25 condemning public remarks made by Justice Arun Mishra in praise of PM Narendra Modi. Arora had alleged that Dave is using the office of SCBA for political purposes and called for his removal from the primary membership of the Bar Association as well. On June 5, SCBA issued a notice to Ashok Arora to show cause as to why ex-parte proceedings by a three-member committee should not be initiated against him for alleged imputations laid out in the notice. Soon after being suspended, Arora had sent out a message to members of the Bar accusing the EC of intimidating him on different occasions and further alleging that Dave's conduct has brought disrepute to the Bar. In an extraordinary move, the Bar Council of India intervened in the issue to stay the SCBA resolution suspending Arora. The SCBA responded to this by stating that 'BCI has no power to control Bar Associations'

Supreme Court Allows Ashok Arora To Argue In Person Plea Against His Suspension As SCBA Secretary

Radhika Roy

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