In Re: Venugopal Naydu

Petitioner who is a First Grade Pleader has been charged u/s 14 of the Legal Practitioners Act by the Sub-Divisional Magistrate, Pattukottah. He was engaged to represent the accused in a security case and all the charges against him except one alleged various acts of misconduct in relation, to that case. These charges were made to the District Magistrate, Tanjore, by the Deputy Superintendent of Police, who suggested that proceedings should be taken against petitioner under the Legal Practitioners Act. In the result the Additional District Magistrate forwarded the Police report to the Sub-Divisional Magistrate, Pattukottah for enquiry and the latter issued notice to petitioner u/s 14 of the Act. It is not quite clear what was in the mind of the Additional District Magistrate Whether he intended that the Sub-Divisional Magistrate should himself dispose of the charges or whether his idea was that a sort of preliminary enquiry should be held and a re-, port should be submitted with a view to possible future action by himself. From either point of view, he acted without'' jurisdiction. The Legal Practitioners Act makes no provision either for the transfer of proceedings or for the holding of a preliminary enquiry of such a nature. Mr. Jayarama Aiyar contends that in any event most of the charges against his client cannot be enquired into as they relate to alleged acts of misconduct not committed in or in relation to the Court which proposes to enquire into them. That, we consider, is an objection that should more properly be taken before the District Magistrate, who will now proceed to deal with the matter himself. As, however it has been taken here, we may as well dispose of it at once. The view relied on by Mr. Jayarama Iyer finds support in several decisions of the Patna High Court of which we may quote that reported in Emperor v. Satyendra Nath Roy 21 Cr.L.J. 633 as an example. The same view has beenv expressed by the Calcutta High Court in In re Radha Churn Chukerbutty 4 C.L.J. 229With great respect, we prefer to follow the ruling of the Calcutta High Court reported as In re Rabindra Chandra Chatterjee 67 Ind. Cas. 985: 49 C. 850 As pointed out by Woodroffe, J., and Mookerjee, J., Section 14 of the Legal Practitioners Act does not limit the consideration of a charge to the Court in which the misconduct is alleged to have been committed. To say that it does, is, we think, to read into Section 14 something that is not there.

The District Magistrate will now dispose of the report made to him in accordance with law, but we think it undesirable that proceedings for misconduct against the defence Vakil should be taken before the security case against his client has been disposed of.