March 3, 2014 4:44:31 am
Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi interacting with Supreme Court justice KS Panicker Radhakrishnan at Mahatma Mandir in Gandhinagar during the closing ceremony of Bar Council of India’s Gold Jubilee celebrations on Saturday: Javed Raja
Supreme Court judge Justice Dipak Misra on Sunday told members of the Bar Council of India (BCI) to “be strong enough to take action but not behave in a way to please electoral politics”. He was speaking in Gandhinagar during the closing ceremony of BCI’s golden jubilee celebration.
In his 25-minute speech during the programme, Justice Misra said, “I am not saying BCI hasn’t done anything. It has done a lot, but whether or not there has been any value addition to the nobility of the profession is uncertain… There is no full stop in the working of BCI, but punctuation marks. These are efficiency, responsibility and capacity. They have achieved it, but I can’t, however, say enough is enough,” he added.
On Saturday, BCI Chairman Manan Kumar Mishra said BJP’s PM candidate Narendra Modi was Mahatma Gandhi reborn. His comment is said to have not gone down well among the judges of SC and HCs, present at the event. Mishra joined BJP in January. BCI started celebrating its 50 years of existence last year in New Delhi and ended on Sunday in Gandhinagar.
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Much to the embarrassment of those present at the closing ceremony, BCI announced that the state government has not only allowed Mahatma Mandir to be used for free for the event, but also sponsored free food for the 7000-odd lawyers who took part.
Lawyers, present at the event, said such a “sponsorship” was “uncalled for”.
Several lawyers said that BCI Chairman Manan Kumar Mishra should not have made political remarks in presence of judges.
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