Institute of Legal and Management Studies

The Supreme Court today called on the Chairman of Punjab and Haryana Bar Council to submit within 2 days a proposal regarding nomination of a former High Court judge to conduct Bar elections in Haryana.

The ex-judge so nominated should preferably be well-conversant with the functioning of the Bar Associations/Bar Council, the Court said.

A bench of Justices Surya Kant and N Kotiswar Singh passed the order after a counsel appearing for the P&H Bar Council failed to convey necessary instructions in the above regard, despite the Court having sought the parties' opinion, including that of the Bar Council, on an earlier date. "Enough is enough", remarked Justice Kant.

"These are two matters pertaining to elections of the district bar associations of Karnal and Rohtak. There have been complaints with respect to the fairness and transparency in conducting elections in various district Bar associations. It is difficult to say whether there is any prima facie merit in the allegations and counter-allegations. However, in order to ensure that statutory body of Bar Council remains and perceived [...], we had suggested that they should nominate a former judge of the High Court especially if anyone who is well conversant with functioning of Bar Association/Bar Council to act as the Election Tribunal for conducting state-wide elections. We are still awaiting for the response from the Bar Council. We direct the Chairman of Bar Council to submit a proposal in this regard within 2 days", the bench noted in its order.

The matter has been directed to be listed within the first two days of the Court's partial working days (beginning from May 26).

To recap, the Court is dealing with two petitions: one, involving an advocate's challenge to his disqualification from contesting Karnal Bar Association elections, and second, involving issues pertaining to the Rohtak Bar Association.

In the first matter, it had earlier expressed serious displeasure with the manner of functioning of Punjab and Haryana Bar Council as well as the Karnal Bar Association. It had further asked Senior Advocate RS Cheema to suggest names of senior/respected members of Karnal Bar to whom affairs of the Bar Association could be handed over as an interim measure.

On April 15, while lamenting as to what was happening in the State of Haryana, the Court had called on the counsels present to submit names of persons who could be part of an independent Tribunal (headed by a former judge of the High Court) to conduct the elections.

Appearance: Senior Advocates RS Cheema (Amicus Curiae), Narender Hooda, Dr Menaka Guruswamy, Rajive Bhalla, Arvind Sangwan, Santosh Paul, Nakul Dewan, Ritu Bahri and RS Malik; AoRs Shrey Kapoor, Sunny Kadiyan, Varun Punia, Vedant Pradhan, Radhika Gautam, Raghavendra Pratap Singh, Saurabh Agrawal, RC Kaushik, Ajit Sharma and Akshay Saxena; Advocates Nipun Arora, Karan Kapoor and Archana Yadav

Case Title:

(1) SANDEEP CHAUDHRY Versus JAGMAL SINGH JATAIN AND ORS., SLP(C) No. 7868-7869/2025

(2) SANDEEP KUMAR AND ORS. Versus BAR COUNCIL OF PUNJAB AND HARYANA AND ORS., SLP(C) No. 10323/2025

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