When the Bar stood tall: A Senior Advocate and the conscience of Court No. 1

Modern justice does not always falter with a roar of constitutional crisis. More often, it is altered with quiet, sterile efficiency; a silent reshuffle of the cause list, or the unceremonious muting of a microphone on a screen.

The story of the late Senior Advocate MN Krishnamani, former SCBA President, has acquired a renewed, undeniable relevance in recent days.

The corridors of the Supreme Court have been abuzz regarding an unusual administrative maneuver that quietly rerouted a sensitive case. The dispute centred on a student who was detained under the National Security Act after participating in the Noida minimum wages protest. When the High Court quashed her detention, it took the rare step of imposing a personal fine of ₹5 lakh on the responsible bureaucrat. Then the State appealed to Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court's roster allocates preventive detention matters to its senior-most benches, including the one led by Justice BV Nagarathna. Crucially, when this very student previously challenged her detention before the Supreme Court under Article 32, it was Justice Nagarathna’s Bench that heard the matter and granted her liberty to approach the Allahabad High Court. Furthermore, that same Bench was already hearing a connected petition arising from the exact same Noida protest. Therefore, driven both by the roster's mandate and the established practice of grouping companion cases, the file indisputably belonged in her courtroom.

Yet, by an administrative sleight of hand, the matter bypassed her court entirely. It landed before a Bench presided over by Justice Satish Chandra Sharma, where the fine was stayed in short order and the virtual microphone went cold mid-hearing. This reassignment also raises glaring questions of judicial propriety, as the protected bureaucrat is the daughter of the Chief Election Commissioner and Justice Sharma’s own son serves as a standing counsel for the Election Commission in the state of Madhya Pradesh.

When an audio is muted and a roster is rearranged without explanation, the legal fraternity is compelled to remember an era when the Bar did not merely watch the court's administrative machinery turn; it stepped directly into its gears.

To understand what institutional courage looks like, one must walk back into the heavy, tense air of Court No. 1 on the afternoon of February 25, 2013.

At the centre of the storm was the Sahara conglomerate, then fighting a desperate rearguard action against the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI). Months earlier, on August 31, 2012, a coordinate bench of Justices KS Radhakrishnan and JS Khehar had delivered an uncompromising, landmark judgment directing Sahara to refund thousands of crores to investors within a strict timeline.

Instead of complying, the corporate titan sought an escape hatch. The matter was mentioned before Chief Justice Altamas Kabir, who directed it to be listed before himself on December 3, 2012, rather than sending it back to the coordinate bench. Subsequently, on December 5, 2012, a three-judge bench presided over by the Chief Justice modified the coordinate bench’s decision in favour of Sahara.

It was a classic, brazen instance of bench-hunting: inviting the Chief Justice’s court to dilute what another bench had firmly sealed into law. A tense atmosphere permeated the Bar, with murmurs that the Chief Justice was overstepping his administrative prerogative as master of the roster.

On February 25, 2013, an application seeking further relaxation was sought by Sahara before CJI. The courtroom was packed to the brim. As the matter was called, the Court seemed inclined to entertain the plea. Then, from the crowded rows of black robes, a figure emerged.

It was MN Krishnamani, then-President of the Supreme Court Bar Association. He held no brief for SEBI. He was not retained by Sahara. He did not possess a single sheet of paper from the case file, nor did he have a client whispering instructions into his ear. He walked to the centre podium propelled by something far rarer: the institutional conscience of an independent Bar.

Krishnamani looked up at the Bench and addressed the Chief Justice directly,

"In keeping with the traditions of the court, I request you not to modify an order passed by another bench."

The courtroom froze. To suggest in open court that the Chief Justice of India was departing from the solemn traditions of his own institution was unthinkable. Chief Justice Kabir bristled instantly, his demeanour hardening at what he perceived as an audacious intrusion.

"How do you know what we are going to do?" Justice Kabir demanded, looking down from the dais. "Do you know what the matter is about? Do you know about the contents of the application?"

The Chief Justice sought to corner him on procedure, pointing out that the Bar President had not read the papers. But Krishnamani refused to retreat into technicalities. He was not arguing the merits of an application; he was defending the sanctity of the forum.

"Interference by the court in the matter had given room for rumours," Krishnamani replied, unflinching. "I felt pained and agonised. I have decided to caution the Court as the leader of the Bar."

"We do not need cautioning," Justice Kabir retorted, visibly affronted. "Take your seat and see what the matter is all about."

Krishnamani took his seat, but his words had already echoed across the room. He had publicly drawn a line that no judge could easily cross. The plea for relaxation was dismissed minutes later. The message had been delivered: the Chief’s administrative prerogative was not an absolute monarch’s domain and the Bar would not remain a polite bystander while the rulings of coordinate benches were chipped away.

Watching this extraordinary confrontation, the legal titan Fali Sam Nariman was moved to absolute reverence. Nariman, who had witnessed every high and low of the Supreme Court since the days of the Republic’s youth, knew how easily the Bar could slip into subservience, currying favour with the master of the roster for personal gain. To see an advocate stand before the highest judicial authority in the land, with no personal interest, armed only with the traditions of the court, was, to Nariman, the purest manifestation of legal nobility.

Commenting openly on the courage, Nariman declared to the Bar,

“Krishnamani is my president for life."

Our constitutional democracy does not harbour the illusion that an individual will function with absolute fairness merely because they occupy a position through procedure established by law. Had the Constitution held such a utopian expectation, the guarantees of free speech and dissent would never have been written. The system recognises a legitimate, undeniable truth: that both procedures and the people operating them can go wrong. When they do, the Constitution expects nothing less than for the citizen and fearless Bar to stand up, speak out and pull the institution back to justice.

Adnan Aboobacker is an advocate practicing before the Supreme Court of India.