Thirteen SCBA Executive Committee members pen open letter, President responds

After an apparent rift between the members of the Executive Committee (EC) of the Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA) over the issue of Annual Day function, there has been an exchange of contentious letters between the Executive Committee members and the President of the SCBA..13 members of the EC wrote an open letter today essentially raising issues with the way the EC has been functioning. This open letter claims that “none of the major decisions, programs and functions of the SCBA till now have been arrived at democratically and after due deliberations” The focus point of this letter is, indeed, the Annual Day celebration and the decisions regarding this event..In turn, the SCBA President, Vikas Singh has sent a letter to all of the 21 members of the Executive Committee listing down issues (in addition to the primary issue of SCBA Annual Day celebration) that he feels need to be discussed at the General Body Meeting. However, the focus of this letter is also on the Annual Day celebration event..The Open letter issued by EC members goes point wise in raising issues specifically about the Annual Day celebration stating that, according to them, the estimated number of guests at the event would be far less than the 10000-11000 as stipulated by the SCBA President. Hence, the ideal place for the event would be the Supreme Court premises as opposed to a stadium as suggested by the President of the SCBA..The SCBA President, however, states in his letter that the purpose of holding the event on a grand scale is to invite families of the Bar members as this can “bring in a lot of cultural integration amongst the members of the Bar” and provides a platform for all members of the Bar to mingle. The primary purpose, he states, is to “award the youngsters at the Bar” and to enable interaction between the youngsters and the senior members..Another contention that the open letter talks about is the invitations to and reservation of 1000 tickets for corporate houses. The 13 signing members term the involvement of corporate sector in an SCBA event as “abhorrent”. Vikas Singh’s response to this point remains that the proposal to extend these invitations was to generate funds for the welfare of the Bar members..A counter argument presented to Singh’s clarification is that “SCBA is a family. We do not invite our clients in a family function” and they feel that this move would amount to “denigrating the dignity, esteem and prestige of the Bar in return for a few chips”.Besides issues revolving around the Annual Day celebration, the 13 members through their open letter have also expressed their displeasure over “unilateral decisions” taken regarding the constitution of editorial board of SCBA’s newsletter “SCBA Times”, sending back proximity cards of three office bearers, and over an SCBA cricket event. The letter also complains about overall sidelining of pertinent issues involving the Bar and the Judiciary in favour of discussion around the Annual Day celebration..At the same time, Vikas Singh’s letter to the entire EC aims at discussing matters beyond the Annual Day celebration and has listed down issues that he feels need discussion at the General Body Meeting which has been called for by 337 Bar members..Singh, in his letter has stated that one of the pertinent issues that needs to be taken up is proposing an amendment to the SCBA Rules by way of inserting a Rule 40 (A) “Collection of Lawyers Welfare Fun and its Utilisation”..This proposed amendment seeks to provide for a compulsory affixation of a lawyers’ welfare fund stamp, prepared by the SCBA, to be carried on every vakalatnama. Singh says that the purpose of the stamp would be “to establish a corpus which can be utilized for welfare activities of the Bar like Group Medical Insurance Scheme and Group Life Insurance Scheme”..Singh has also stated that he has been “vigorously pursuing” this matter with the Chief Justice of India (CJI) and the CJI in turn has assured Singh that attempt will be made to amend the SCBA rules soon. Singh’s letter also delves into the details of method in which the welfare fund thus collected will be utilized..Another issue that Singh touches upon in his letter is the expenditure incurred by the SCBA towards election of the office bearers and proposal to amend Rule 18(1)(a) of the SCBA Rules to increase the amount of deposit to be made by the members who file their nominations for various posts..Clarifying his position on claims made about his inaccessibility to the Bar members, Singh writes,.“my endeavour has always been to work in the interest of its [SCBA] members and raise the prestige of the Association.”.Read the Open letter by members of the EC below..Read SCBA President’s letter below.