MUMBAI, July 7: The controversy revolving around elections to the Bar Council of Maharashtra and Goa, results to which were declared in March this year, has taken another turn with three council members filing petitions for cancelling the entire election.Elections to the Bar Council took place on February 2 this year. It was alleged that malpractices were adopted by members in the postal ballot system. As a result, 300 ballot papers were segregated during the counting. Even before votes were cast, several petitions were filed seeking suspension of the postal ballot system. During the period when counting was on (a month), petitions were filed for cancelling the elections. All these petitions were rejected by the respective benches. The council, however, filed a formal police complaint at Azad Maidan police station regarding the bogus ballot papers.Three new petitions have now been filed by the council members before the tribunal of the council. As per the rules of the council, such a tribunal has to beconstituted to try and dispose of any disputes arising from such elections. The three members filing disputes are J B Patil (Sangli), G D Lohia (Akola) and A B Chaudhari (Nagpur). Interestingly, this is the first time in its three-decade-old history that the Bar Council's tribunal has had to deal with petitions filed seeking cancellation of elections to the entire 25-member body. Earlier, the tribunal had dealt with disputes regarding individual candidates.Since the tribunal was hearing such petitions for the first time, it thought it fit to first ensure if it could entertain such petitions. Therefore, it sent notices to the petitioners asking them to convince the tribunal whether it had power and jurisdiction to deal with such cases. Accordingly, the petitioners appeared before the tribunal to explain their case. Subsequently, the tribunal sent notices to all the 94 defendant members who had contested the elections, asking them to explain their stance by August 17. The matter will be heard by thetribunal on September 5.
