Suraj Narayan Prasad Sinha

Ranchi, May 6: Bar Council of India (BCI), the apex regulator of legal profession, said it did not want any confrontation with the judiciary even as it wanted to “weed out judges with doubtful character”.

“The entire nation wants the judiciary to be fair. People have a right to know who is who in the judiciary,” BCI chairman Suraj Narayan Prasad Sinha said.

Sinha was here to attend a seminar organised by the State Bar Council that began on Saturday.

Sinha said that the BCI had circulated a nine-page questionnaire to all state bar councils in order to assess the strength and weaknesses in the legal profession. “Besides, the BCI also wanted to assess whether there were judges of doubtful character in the Supreme Court as well as the high courts. We are yet to get responses to the questionnaire circulated in February,” he added.

“We will place the details before the higher judicial authorities once we collect the profile of the judges of doubtful character,” he said.

The BCI chairman said that there was no question of facing contempt of the court for taking up the exercise. “If there is one, I will face it. In fact, several judges themselves have been saying that several of their colleagues were facing corruption charges. So, we are just repeating their assessment only,” Sinha, who had inspected the Koderma law college, said.

The BCI chief also maintained that he differed with the view of Chief Justice of India K.G. Balakrishnan, which he aired recently, that the Right to Information (RTI) Act did not apply to judiciary. “The RTI Act is applicable to each and every constitutional functionary except those exempted by the legislation itself. It is a device to check corruption. So, the judges should gladly accept the Act,” he said.

“If a man on the street owns a castle, people have every right to know how did he earn so much overnight.”

He also said there must be transparency in appointing judges. “A judicial commission should be immediately constituted and persons of repute should be involved in the appointment process. It is ridiculous to find that a judge could be an appointing authority for the judges,” he said.

The monitoring body also admitted that there are black sheep among the lawyers. “The BCI was in the process to weed them out. We are contemplating to introduce a training system or lawyers in professional ethics before they enter it,” he pointed out.

Sinha said that the standard of legal profession has deteriorated across the country. “We have framed rules so that colleges, which do not follow the criteria, should go. We have de-recognised some 100 out of 167 law colleges in Rajasthan. Eight out of 17 law colleges have faced the axe in Bihar. We have inspected several law colleges in Jharkhand, too, and will take action against them after we get the report,” he said.