Supreme Court dismisses petitions against One Bar One Vote ruling

A month and a half after the Delhi High Court Bar Association elections concluded, the Supreme Court today dismissed a batch of petitions filed against the order of the Delhi High Court in connection with the one-bar-one-vote rule..A Bench of Justices Pinaki Chandra Ghose and Rohinton Nariman heard the parties at length today before putting an end to the hotly debated issue. Last year, the Delhi High Courts’ Justices S Ravindra Bhat and Siddharth Mridul had ruled on the implementation of the one-bar-one-vote principle in bar association elections. In addition, any advocate who has a chamber in any of the court complexes in Delhi would not be allowed to claim allotment of another chamber. In October, the same bench had also made some modifications as to how this rule was to be implemented..The verdict did not sit well with various Bar Associations, who then moved the Supreme Court via a barrage of Special Leave Petitions..Today, senior counsel Dushyant Dave and Dinesh Dwivedi appeared for the Bar Council of Delhi and the Bar Associations respectively. Dave only submitted that since the elections had already been completed, the matter could be laid to rest..Dwivedi was not as succinct.His primary contention stemmed from the fact that the judgment was a restriction on a bar association’s power to frame its own rules. He went on to lambast the Delhi High Court for what he called a blatant transgression of their powers and added that since the High Court does not have powers under Article 142, the judgment was illegal.The Bench disagreed, and proceeded to dismiss the petition.