After Ruckus In Advocates Association Election, Madras High Court To Fix New Date For Polls

The Madras High Court has said that it will go through all the materials that have been provided by the interested parties and the Teller Committee with respect to the unfortunate events that took place in connection with the Madras High Court Advocates Association elections. 

"The glory of the association has to be regained one way or the other. We will go through the report and the CCTV footage and then pass an order. We will also fix a new date for the conduct of elections in a short span of time"

The division bench of Justice R Mahadevan and Justice Mohammed Shaffiq had earlier asked the Teller Committee to file its report on the alleged incidents of booth capturing and subsequent violence.

Around 200 lawyers, who were present in the court room urged the court to look into the matter seriously. Some of the contesting candidates submitted that there were infrastructural deficiencies in the manner in which the election was carried out. These included delay in verification of the QR Codes, "young boys who were made booth officers instead of capable officers", insufficient entry points etc. 

Some lawyers also alleged that the Teller Committee had introduced the system of QR code without proper discussions with the bar members. It was also alleged that while scanning the QR code, the data of the lawyers would be collected which could then be used by any third party thus even leading to breach of data. 

Denying the allegations of breach of data, the teller committee, represented by Senior Advocate MK Kabir informed the court that the QR Code only took photographs of the voters to ensure that no bogus voting or duplicate voting took place. The committee added that the elections were going properly untill the QR code started to irk some persons. This led to some outside "agents" entering the polling booths and creating ruckus which subsequently led to cancellation of elections. 

"The whole thing went awry only because we, the lawyers, could not maintain discipline," the Teller Committee told the High Court. 

When the court asked the bar members what action could be taken against those to indulged in vandalism, a majority of the bar members submitted that no person should be allowed to take the court for granted and that strict action should be taken against such persons as per law.

Case Title: K Sathyabal v. The Chairman and members and ors

Case No: REV APLW 167 of 2021 (Bar Council Cases)