Adv. Deepak Khosla makes 5 min audio clip of CLB proceedings; CLB passes Regulation 51 to prevent recordings

Deepak Khosla, a Noida-based lawyer who has been pushing for audio-recordings of court proceedings, managed to partly record proceedings before the Company Law Board yesterday. Khosla, who was arguing an application before the CLB yesterday, recorded the first five minutes of proceedings before Presiding Officer BSV Prakash Kumar..This move comes more than a month after Khosla first wrote to CLB Chairman, Justice DR Deshmukh seeking information on whether CLB proceedings can be recorded and if not, under what provision of law does this restriction flow from. Subsequently Khosla also informed the CLB that if no restriction existed, he would go ahead with recording the proceedings on February 25, 2014..The Chairman eventually met Khosla on February 18, 2014 and, as per Khosla, sought some more time to consider Khosla’s proposal. No further communications were sent to Khosla..Yesterday, when Khosla began recording the proceedings, he was given a copy of Regulation 51, a provision that was inserted into the Company Law Regulations of 1991 on February 20, 2014. The provision read as follows:.“51. Restriction on Audio or Video Recording by the parties –There shall be no audio or video recording of the Bench proceedings by the parties.”.Undeterred Khosla argued that this Rule has not published in the Indian Gazette and hence has no validity in law. Brushing aside this contention, Presiding Officer Kumar made repeated requests to Khosla to stop recording or in the alternative, ask this matter to be heard by another CLB officer. Khosla eventually switched off the recorder, after requesting that all contentions raised would be reproduced in subsequent orders..Speaking to Bar & Bench, Khosla says that he is determined to introduce audio recordings in the CLB and shall be meeting the Joint Secretary, Ministry of Corporate Affairs later today. “I am not giving this up,” he says..In March last year, Khosla had raised allegations of “gross judicial misconduct” against a sitting judge of the Delhi High Court. The judge in question, Justice Suresh Kait, had sent Khosla to a mental health institute while hearing contempt proceedings against Khosla. A Division Bench eventually set aside this direction but not before Khosla was made to spend days in the institute..The contempt proceedings themselves were initiated after Khosla tried to make a recording of the court proceedings before Justice Kait. In fact, Khosla has been agitating for the right to record court proceedings for several years now; evidently he has partly managed to succeed before the CLB. .(Audio Recording of the CLB Proceedings).[[{“type”:”media”,”view_mode”:”media_original”,”fid”:”22802″,”attributes”:{“alt”:””,”class”:”media-image”,”style”:”line-height: 1.538em;”,”typeof”:”foaf:Image”}}]]