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Senior Advocate and National President of the Human Rights Organization, People’s Union for Civil Liberties, Mr. Ravi Kiran Jain has written an open letter to the Bar in reply to the letter issued by Honorable Justice Sudhir Agrawal suggesting that judges of superior courts should have 10% of their salary and retired judges have 5% of their pensions deducted for a period of one year to meet the emergency situation due to the coronavirus.
In a letter to the Chief Justice of the Allahabad High Court and the Presidents of the High Court Bar Association, Advocate Association and Awadh Bar Association, Justice Sudhir Agrawal had also suggested and requested designated Senior Advocates under the Advocate Act 1961, to contribute Rs. 50,000 per month for at least one year.
In reply to Justice Agrawal’s letter, Mr. Jain said that Justice Agrawal should first ask the government to withdraw his Z+ security which isn’t required, especially after the Supreme Court judgement on the Ayodhya land dispute and will save a sufficient amount of tax payers’ money.
In his letter, senior advocate Jain said, “So far as the contribution made by designated Senior Advocates is concerned, he should not have written this letter to the Senior Advocates for two reasons. One is that Senior Advocates might be making their own contributions already and other is that, now a days , clients instead of engaging Senior Advocates prefer to engage kith and kin of Judges practicing in high court and paying them fees much more than that of a Senior Advocate.”
Quoting a Constitutional expert, Mr. HM Seervai, for his monumental work on Constitutional Law, Mr. Jain said, “We must deal with a problem that has perturbed many judges committed to independence of Judiciary … The problem may be stated thus: High Court X has among a number of Judges, four Judges, A,B,C and D. Each of them has a son E, F, G and H respectively practising in that High Court. Under the Rules of the Bar Council. E does not practice in the court of his father A, but practices before Judges B, C and D. And F. G and H do likewise mutatis mutandis. In the course of discussion in the Judges’ case the situation was described by saying that it was generally believed that A,B,C and D constituted a mutual co-operative society, in the sense that it was believed that each of the four Judges would protect the sons of the other three Judges. This led to perversion of justice, because this general belief led litigants to brief E ,F, G, and H in the hope of obtaining favourable orders which they would not obtain by briefing other counsel of greater competence and ability.”
Shri Ravi Kiran Jain forwarded the copy of the letter to Honourable Chief Justice and Justice Sudhir Agrawal.
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