Objection, says My Lord: Meet the Bar Council of India chief in the dock over NALSAR row
Manan Kumar Mishra, 69, has seldom shied away from controversy and openly spoken up for the govt. In directive against NALSAR students though, he went too far
Chief Justice of India Surya Kant and BCI Chairman Manan Kumar Mishra In the unprecedented 12 years that he has helmed the Bar Council of India (BCI), Manan Kumar Mishra has survived many a controversy. Rarely, however, has the rap come from the Chief Justice of India (CJI) himself.
On Friday, as a BCI directive that graduating students of Hyderabad’s NALSAR University of Law would not be enrolled as advocates because of their objections to the CJI presiding over their convocation triggered a row, CJI Surya Kant asked what business the matter was of the council.
Students have a right to protest, the CJI-led Bench said. “It’s a dialogue between students and me. Who are they (the BCI) to interfere?… The BCI does not have any business in this,” the CJI said, after a plea challenging the BCI’s circular, later withdrawn, was mentioned before it for urgent hearing. The Bench also issued a notice to the BCI on the matter.
BCI office-bearers told The Indian Express that the directive was entirely Mishra’s decision, without consulting colleagues.
In his long period of being the BCI chief, Mishra has proudly worn his political loyalties on his sleeve, endorsing the BJP and Prime Minister Narendra Modi. In 2024, the BJP nominated him to the Rajya Sabha, with eyebrows raised about a ruling party parliamentarian also heading an “independent” regulator of the legal profession.
This time, however, the 69-year-old may have overplayed his hand. Coming out of a bruising Jantar Mantar protest that started with remarks attributed to him, CJI Surya Kant would have hardly wanted a new row involving students and him – neither would the government.
A lawyer from Bihar
A native of Gopalganj in Bihar, Mishra began his practice at the Gopalganj Civil Court, later moving to the Patna High Court and finally the Supreme Court. In 1989, the Senior Advocate became associated with the Bihar State Bar Council, and was elected as its representative to the BCI in 2010.
As per senior Bar members in Bihar as well as New Delhi, Mishra dealt, sporadically, with small criminal and civil cases.
RECAP | In CJI boycott row, BCI’s u-turn on NALSAR grads’ ‘ban’
In April 2012, Mishra became the BCI Chairman for the first time, holding the post till 2014. For seven months after that, the Rajasthan Bar’s Biri Singh Sinsinwar was at the helm of the BCI, before Mishra was re-elected in November 2014. Says Sinsinwar: “I stepped down since my legal practice was getting affected… I had an office to run, a family to take care of.”
Mishra has since been repeatedly re-elected as BCI chief, winning for the seventh time in March 2025.
As early as 2009, Mishra had begun considering politics as a career. That year, he fought from the Valmiki Nagar constituency in Bihar on a BSP ticket. He finished a credible third, with a little over 76,000-odd votes. Next year, Mishra jumped to the Congress and contested the Bihar Assembly elections from Gopalganj’s Baikunthpur seat. This time he could poll only 2,000-odd votes.
After that, Mishra turned his attention to the BCI – and the BJP. In 2024, the BJP nominated him for a Rajya Sabha seat from Bihar.
Says a senior Bihar BJP leader: “Mishra was spotted by our Delhi leaders because of his clout with the Bar and Bench as an advocate in the Supreme Court. Mishra always had a political orientation, and always supported any official stand taken by the judiciary.”
In the space for ‘profession’ in his election affidavit in 2024, Mishra wrote: “Shop & House Rent, B.C.I through Sitting Allowance”. He declared his total assets at Rs 14.93 crore.
Repeated efforts to reach Mishra were unsuccessful.
Unfettered reign
Through his unbroken run, Mishra has continuously faced allegations of “arbitrary” decision-making and not following due process, with questions increasingly being raised openly, including within the BCI and state bar councils.
Soon after Mishra was elected to the Rajya Sabha in 2024, a practising advocate in Delhi, Amit Kumar Diwakar, moved the Delhi High Court seeking directions to the Centre and the Election Commission to disqualify him. Diwakar contended that while holding the office of BCI chairman, a statutory body under the Advocates Act, 1961, Mishra could not serve as a sitting MP.
The High Court dismissed Diwakar’s plea – which invoked violation of office of profit principles – on technicalities.
However, ex-Solicitor General of India, and current president of the Supreme Court Bar Association, Vikas Singh also calls this a serious contradiction. “Being the head of a regulatory body, which is supposed to be independent, how can you take a Rajya Sabha seat from the ruling party?”
Incidentally, in January 2018, an expert committee of Mishra-led BCI had issued notices to over 500 lawyers-cum-lawmakers, including Kapil Sibal, Abhishek Manu Singhvi, P Chidambaram (all associated with the Congress), telling them to show cause why they should not be debarred from practising law while holding legislative office.
The matter was later dropped after a BCI sub-committee ruled that legislators, being elected representatives, can continue their practice.
The federal structure of the BCI has also come under strain in Mishra’s tenure, with several state bar councils moving court against the Council.
Earlier this month, M Velmurugan, a member of the Bar Council of Tamil Nadu and Puducherry, challenged an order passed by Mishra, accusing him of colluding with S Prabhakaran, who had lost as vice-chairperson of the state council, to prop up a “limited interim arrangement”.
On August 7, without going into the wider question of the extent of supervisory powers of the BCI, the Madras High Court disposed of the plea, after the council’s counsel agreed to the state bar’s interim arrangement of elected members managing day-to-day affairs. A similar situation was witnessed in the Kerala Bar Council.
Earlier this year, several members of the Bar Council of Chhattisgarh moved the High Court, challenging a January 6 directive by the BCI deferring elections to the body. The BCI defended its move, saying the elections held in September 2025 had received complaints about corrupt practices, horse-trading etc.
The matter went up to the Supreme Court, and in February this year, it directed a fact-finding inquiry by retired Supreme Court judge Justice Sudhanshu Dhulia. The petition remains pending.
In April 2025, Shreenath Tripathi went to the Delhi High Court following his removal as the Uttar Pradesh Bar Council’s representative in the BCI after a six-year stint. Tripathi accused Mishra of removing him “on unsubstantiated allegations” and questioned the no-confidence resolution passed by the UP Bar Council against him.
The High Court stayed the no-confidence resolution while pulling up the BCI saying its own procedure “appears to have been discarded in totality”. Months later, the BCI withdrew the resolution.
Tripathi told The Indian Express: “Earlier, the tenure of chairman and vice-chairman of the BCI was for two years. But Mishra brought in amendments extending the tenure from two to three, and then five years. We opposed the move, but it was cleared as he (Mishra) had the ruling party’s support. There are 20 state member-representatives in the BCI but he has complete control and command.”
Tripathi also talks of pending elections to several state bar councils, including Delhi, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Punjab. “As a result, the BCI’s elections too are at a standstill.”
Advocate Prashant Bhushan says one way through which Mishra has controlled the regulatory body is by stalling free and fair elections in state bar councils. “The system is now in disarray… He has ensured that only those who will vote for him remain in the state councils.”
A senior lawyer describes BCI resolutions passed under him as “diktats”.
In 2023, the council passed a resolution opposing legal recognition of same-sex marriages even as the Supreme Court was hearing pleas on marriage equality. Mishra asserted that “99.9% of the people in India” opposed the concept, drawing criticism for going beyond his brief.
Mishra has also taken a strong line against lawyer strikes and protests, over everything from judicial appointments to advocate protection Bills.
A Trust ‘broken’
In 1974, a Bar Council of India Trust for Promotion of Education (Legal and Professional) and Reforms in Law and for Improvement, Research, and Social training (BCI Trust- PEARL FIRST) was created, with the goal of “maintaining professional standards in the legal profession and effecting improvements in legal education”.
According to the BCI’s website, the public charitable trust was “mandated to establish law schools of excellence and to promote legal research”. Its Board of Trustees includes the BCI chief as Chairman and four others elected for a four-year term from amongst BCI members. Among the trustee members is Mishra’s nephew Nalin Raj Chaturvedi, “an additional secretary of the BCI”.
Vikas Singh flags the “conflict of interest” in the entire arrangement. “The BCI decides recognition and approvals for law colleges. Now a trust under it opens a college, and it decides the recognition and affiliation!”
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