Bombay High Court refuses to stay Bar Council disciplinary proceedings against advocate Gunratan Sadavarte

The Bombay High Court Tuesday “emphatically” refused to stay the disciplinary proceedings initiated by the Bar Council of Maharashtra & Goa (BCMG) against advocate Gunratan Sadavarte..A division bench of Justices GS Patel and Neela Gokhale held that there was no provision in the administrative law for the court to intervene in proceedings of regulatory bodies, when there was nothing wrong with the decision making process. “Let them (BCMG) deal with the complaint. We are extremely reluctant to be an overseer of the Bar Council of Maharashtra & Goa. We are saying emphatically, that we are not staying the proceedings. Every professional person, will otherwise come before us against their regulatory body and say, ‘please stop’. You (Sadavarte) will face it, because there is no reason in administrative law for us to intervene, because there is nothing wrong in the decision making process,” the Court said..The bench was hearing Sadavarte’s petition challenging the notice issued by BCMG asking him to appear on a complaint filed by advocate Sushil Manchekar, former president of the Pimpri Court Bar Association alleging that Sadavrte had worn a black coat with band at public events including an agitation by (MSRTC) employees. Manchekar complained that the same was in violation of rules framed by the Bar Council of India (BCI)..Advocate Subhash Jha, appearing for Sadavarte, said that the order passed by a single-member bench of BCMG, implicitly held Sadavarte guilty of the offence. Dr Milind Sathe, the Senior Advocate appearing for BCMG, informed the Court that the order of the single member was part of the prescribed procedure as per which the member gives a prime facie suggestion on whether or not the complaint is required to be heard by a 3-member disciplinary committee.While the Court found no fault in the ‘filtering process’ of BCMG, it suggested that the single-member bench could perhaps limit his observations to the maintainability of the complaint instead of going into the merits of the complaint itself..Jha also claimed there was malafide in the complaint and raised certain objections against the conduct of the Bar Council members with respect to the complaint.The Court, however, was not inclined to increase the scope of the petition. “You cannot open a canvas against Bar Council like this. You can have many grievances against it, but you can do the same by filing a separate petition. In this plea, we are only concerned with the prayers here. If they are dismissing on their own, why should we intervene,” the Court stated..Sadavarte had also challenged another complaint against him filed by an activist Nitin Yadav. After the court’s observations on the frivolity of the complaint, BCMG informed the Court today, that Yadav’s complaint had been dismissed by the disciplinary committee.