'Be Dignified In Raising Grievance' : Karnataka HC CJ Pulls Up Advocate Who Sent Discourteous Email To Registry

A division bench of Chief Justice Abhay Oka and Justice Ashok S Kinagi asked the advocate to appear via video conferencing, and expressed strong displeasure at his conduct. The bench said "I would not have called you but for yesterday's email sent to the Registrar. Do you even know that the Registrar Judicial is a District judge?."

Chief Justice Oka said "I am telling you only one thing if anything goes wrong in the High Court, I as the Chief Justice, I am responsible. So if you want to abuse any member of staff then please abuse the Chief Justice and not the staff. It is my duty to protect the staff, I am sitting here please abuse me now."

The advocate who had sent an email to the registry with a subject "HC authorities not going through the email and not replying properly," started profusely apologizing to the court. He said "I have no complaint against the authority, High court or Chief Justice. I am sorry milords. I seek an apology."

To which Justice Oka said "Please behave in a dignified manner, today also we have rejected your memo as it is not in consonance with the Standard Operating Procedure."

The court added, "Hereafter, I am telling you two things. If you have any grievance against the Chief Justice, don't address it to the secretary of the Chief Justice, address it to the Chief Justice of India. Secondly, any grievance you have should be raised in a dignified manner, consistent with the dignity of the profession of lawyer. Thirdly in all correspondences address it as an officer of court and not the mouthpiece of your client, this is what the Supreme Court says we are not saying it."

The bench also made the advocate aware of the working conditions in the High Court. "First find out where you are going wrong and then start blaming others. This is happening day in and day out , lawyers don't understand how difficult it is to work here. Please tell us in which institution in Bangalore more than 100 staff have tested positive, still the institution is working. After so many cases were detected this week we have started 12 physical hearing benches," it said.

The advocate repeated "I am sorry milords I just want my memo to be listed before court."

To which Justice Oka said "Please understand that if you want to tender an apology send it by email. Please follow SOP, please don't be under the impression that if you are applying you will get it (date of hearing) only if there is urgency you will get a date, or else you will have to wait in queue."

Later, Advocate General Prabhuling K Navadgi who was appearing in another matter before the court said "Lordships need not be perturbed. Normally it does not happen, isolated cases like these your lordships may kindly ignore."

Justice Oka said "I am not perturbed but a signal has to be given to the members of the bar. The reason is, so long as they are criticizing me I am not bothered but If they start making abusive calls to the staff members…" He added "This is confined to few selected members of the Bar, generally there is no difficulty at all. But then if the matter goes to this extent that you sent an email to the secretary complaining about the Chief Justice, saying that you send a reply immediately, it is an institutional issue."

He concluded by quoting a Marathi saying "If you want to criticize daughter in law, you should criticize daughter. So it is a question of sending a signal to everyone."

On July 9, the CJ had similarly reprimanded an advocate for sending a discourteous email to the registry over urgent listing of a case.