Bar Council panel imposes Rs 1L penalty on Ludhiana resident

Tribune News Service

Ramkrishan Upadhyay

Chandigarh, March 31

The Disciplinary Committee of the Bar Council of Punjab and Haryana has imposed a penalty of Rs1 lakh on an 80-year-old Ludhiana resident for filing false and frivolous complaints against an advocate, who is also a resident of Ludhiana.

The complainant alleged that the advocate was a terrorist. He has also levelled corruption charges against him. The complainant further alleged that in his 96 civil suits of service matters against Punjab Agriculture University (PAU) and 36 criminal complaints of officers of the PAU, he did not submit a single written statement and he is deliberately delaying the proceedings.

The advocate denied all charges and stated that the present complaint was not maintainable as there was no relationship of advocate and client between the complainant and the respondent as he was never engaged by the complainant for providing any sort of legal services. Rather, he worked in the interest of his client i.e. PAU.

He also said the High Court had earlier also imposed a fine of Rs1 lakh on the complainant on account of lodging false and frivolous complaints.

The committee, comprising of chairman CM Munjal and members Harish Rai Dhanda and Seema Arora, in its order observed that “we are of the considered opinion that this complaint is a complete misuse of the process and there is no relationship of client and advocate between the parties. Thus, we are of this view that the complaint is not maintainable against the respondent advocate and the complainant has misused the process of the Bar Council. This being the rare of the rarest case in which the complainant has tried to hijack the judicial system, it will be appropriate that exemplary costs also be imposed in the present false and frivolous complaint. Therefore, we impose a cost of Rs1 lakh on the complainant”.

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