BCI co-chair YR Sadasiva Reddy demands resignation of BCI chairman Manan Kumar Mishra

Senior Advocate and co-chairman of the Bar Council of India (BCI) YR Sadasiva Reddy has written to BCI Chairman Manan Kumar Mishra demanding his immediate resignation.

In a letter dated August 22, Reddy has called upon Senior Advocate Mishra to step down from the post of BCI chairman within fifteen days.

The letter says that under Mishra's chairmanship, the BCI has drifted away from the standards expected of it.

"The Bar Council of India is not the personal estate of any individual... Every rupee it holds is held in trust. Every power it exercises is a power conferred by Parliament for the benefit of the Bar, and not for the benefit of the person who happens to occupy the Chair," Reddy has said.

He has also demanded a special meeting of the BCI and an independent audit of BCI's accounts and of a trust named the "BCI Trust PEARL - First" established during Mishra's tenure as chairman.

Moreover, Reddy has also called for a bar on any further payments being accepted by the BCI from law colleges seeking approval.

The move comes shortly after Mishra drew flak for issuing a letter warning that students of NALSAR, Hyderabad, found to be behind the campaign opposing the participation of Chief Justice of India Justice Surya Kant in the law school's convocation would be barred from enrolment as advocates.

This directive and a proposed inquiry into the issue was withdrawn hours later. Reddy's demand for Mishra's resignation cites this episode.

According to Reddy's letter, the August 13 direction barring the university's graduating batch from enrolment was issued without the material being placed before the Bar Council of India, without the Council deliberating upon it, and without any resolution of this Council authorising it.

"The expression of regret, though belated, is not the point. The point is that the office of Chairman was used to threaten an entire graduating batch of law students - young men and women with no power and no voice - with exclusion from the profession, as reprisal for having held an opinion," Reddy's letter said.

The other grounds mentioned in Reddy's letter includes allegations of irregular appointments being made to the BCI. Reddy claims that several BCI staff members are closely tied to Mishra and appear to have been recruited without any advertisement or transparent appointment process.

The letter has also raised concerns about fund diversion.

As per the letter, a new trust named the "BCI Trust PEARL - First" was registered in 2020 with trustees of Mishra's choosing. Reddy alleges that this trust received a transfer of roughly ₹150 crore from BCI funds, despite objections from several BCI members.

The trust was later associated with several distinguished persons, including former judges, to lend it respectability that it did not deserve given the manner of its creation, Reddy said. With this, the erstwhile BCI Trust has been rendered defunct, the letter says.

"I know of no provision of the Advocates Act, 1961 which permits the corpus of a statutory regulator (BCI) to be transferred to a private trust registered by its own Chairman. None of the members of the Bar Council have ever seen a copy of the Trust Deed," the letter added.

Reddy has further claimed that he received complaints that law colleges seeking BCI approval or renewal were made to pay "contributions" ranging from ₹25 lakh to ₹1 crore to the BCI Trust PEARL.

The letter adds that if these allegations are true, it is a matter of utmost gravity. The BCI's power to grant approval or renewal of approval for law courses is not meant to be a licence to raise funds, the letter adds. Reddy goes on to state that the consequences of such acts are visible from the state of Indian legal education today.

“Colleges that ought never to have been approved continue year after year, and thousands of young persons are sold a degree that equips them for nothing.”

The letter also points to key administrative positions in BCI-run educational institutions being held by Mishra's family members. Reddy adds that there has been an encouragement of factionalism within State Bar Councils through orders issued without deliberation before the full Council.

The letter goes on to flag Mishra's continuous tenure as Chairman since 2012, over fourteen years across successive terms, including one secured again in 2025 as a departure from the rotational principle the parliament intended for the office.

"You have held that office continuously since 2012… This is without precedent. When elections to the office fall due, the arrangements are so managed that the outcome is a foregone conclusion. An elected office that has one occupant for fourteen years has ceased, in any real sense, to be an elected office," the letter says, on this aspect.

Reddy's letter has also flagged the protests by advocates outside BCI's office demanding Mishra's resignation, and to Student Bar Councils of National Law Universities declining to share a platform with the chairman as signs that the confidence of the bar in the BCI has been lost.

"I hold no personal animosity towards you. I have served alongside you on this Council for a decade. It is precisely because I have watched this institution from within for that period that I am able to say, with a clear conscience, that it will not recover while you remain in the Chair ... The Bar of this country deserves better than what it is presently receiving from its own Council. I ask you to allow it that opportunity," Reddy adds in his letter urging Mishra to resign.

Meanwhile, a petition was filed before the Supreme Court on Friday by a lawyer challenging the uninterrupted continuation of Mishra as the BCI Chairman for over a decade.

The petition is yet to be heard by the Court.