Senior Advocate Vikas Singh urges CJI SA Bobde to constitute a bench to resolve SCBA stalemate

Senior Advocate Vikas Singh has urged Chief Justice of India SA Bobde to take up on the judicial side, the deadlock within the Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA) regarding holding of polls to elect the new Executive Committee (EC). .Singh in a letter to the Registrar General of the Supreme Court asked the CJI to constitute a Bench to examine the issue so that the stalemate within the current EC could be resolved at the earliest.Singh also noted that the current President of SCBA, Dushyant Dave has tendered his resignation. .Dave had resigned from office on January 14 highlighting the fact that the tenure of the current EC has already ended. He also adverted to the deadlock between the SCBA members with respect to the manner in which upcoming elections are to be held. He had, in his brief resignation message, said that it may not be possible to hold virtual elections as per schedule "due to reservations held by some lawyers". ."I understand their position and have no quarrel with it but to me any further continuation as the President in these circumstances will be morally wrong," Dave had said..[BREAKING] "Forfeited my right to continue as your leader:" Supreme Court Bar Association President Dushyant Dave resigns.Following Senior Advocate Dave's resignation, an urgent meeting of Supreme Court Bar Association held on January 14, at 8:30 pm which confirmed the resignation tendered by Dave and resolved to hold the SCBA elections by both physical and virtual voting (hybrid mode) by not later than the third week of February. .However, Singh in his request to the Registrar General, has doubted the bonafides of Dave's resignation alleging that deferring the SCBA elections to third week of February, 2021, is an "an attempt by Mr Dave to prolong his tenure till then creating a drama of resignation and then making the EC to reject his decision to resign."."Mr Dave was to constitute the election committee in the first week of November as the term of the EC was ending on the 13th Dec. He delayed the decision by a month. Even after deciding on the 4th December, he delayed communicating to the election committee by another week. When the EC had already decided to conduct the election virtually, there was no occasion for him to call an EC to ratify the election committee decision of appointing NSDL. If a hybrid mode was what they wanted, they should have decided on the 4th itself," Singh said..Speaking to Bar & Bench, Singh said that on Friday night, the Election Committee of SCBA resigned as the SCBA refused to accept its decision to hold elections through NSDL. "The decision to hold election virtually through NSDL was already approved by the SCBA and hence the refusal to pay amounts to defying the decision of the Election committee," Singh said. .Meanwhile, Senior Advocate Dushyant Dave maintained that his resignation was sincere and that he had started the dialogue to hold elections in the first week of November 2020. "My resignation was very sincere as the Executive Committee refused permission for signing agreement with NSDL and sanction payment of about 6 lacs towards it, despite earlier unanimous decision to hold virtual election and even considered NSDL as possible agency. It was certainly not a “ Drama of Resignation”. It was a clear rebuff to those in EC who wanted to review the earlier decision. I strongly believe Elections must be held. In fact, I had started the dialogue in this regard in the first week of November itself as record will bear out and somehow my mail to members of the SCBA seeking their approval for physical or virtual election was delayed by almost two weeks without my knowledge. So hope this clarifies the matter," Dave told Bar & Bench. .The SCBA Executive Committee has, meanwhile, also decided to request CJI Bobde to resume physical functioning at the Supreme Court from February 1, 2020 considering the hardships faced by lawyers. However, the request would be conditional on the pandemic showing decline and government rolling out Covid vaccines for people at large.