डेली हाई कोर्ट ने कहा: बार काउंसिल के अनुशासनात्मक आदेश को केवल सेक्शन 38 के तहत सुप्रीम कोर्ट में अपील द्वारा ही चुनौती दी जा सकती है, आपराधिक रिवीजन अस्वीकार

An advocate disciplined for professional misconduct has one route to challenge a Bar Council of India order passed in appeal: a further appeal to the Supreme Court under Section 38 of the Advocates Act. The petitioner here took a different path, seeking to undo his suspension collaterally through a criminal complaint, and, when that failed, through a criminal revision alleging that the judge who rejected it had committed offences under the SC/ST Act and the Penal Code. The Delhi High Court held that the statutory remedy cannot be bypassed in this manner, and that the order under challenge disclosed no error to correct.

New Delhi: The Delhi High Court has dismissed a criminal revision petition filed by a suspended advocate, holding that an order of the Bar Council of India passed in appeal in disciplinary proceedings can be challenged only by way of an appeal to the Supreme Court under Section 38 of the Advocates Act, 1961, and not through a collateral criminal proceeding [P. Balasubramaniyan v. Shri Vinay Kumar Gupta].

Justice Purushaindra Kumar Kaurav held that the order of the court below, which had rejected the petitioner’s complaint, suffered from no infirmity, and dismissed the revision.

The background

The disciplinary proceedings against the petitioner originated in a direction of the Madras High Court in July 2018, which asked the Registrar General to lodge a complaint against him with the Bar Council of Tamil Nadu and Puducherry. The Disciplinary Committee of the State Bar Council, after hearing him, held him guilty of professional misconduct in May 2019 and suspended him from practice for three years; in a separate connected matter, it ordered his removal from the State rolls, with the two punishments to run concurrently.

On the petitioner’s appeal under Section 37 of the Advocates Act, the Bar Council of India, in January 2022, affirmed the finding of misconduct and modified the punishment in the connected matter from permanent removal from the rolls to suspension for five years. Rather than pursue the further statutory appeal, the petitioner approached the Principal District and Sessions Judge-cum-Special Judge (PC Act) (CBI) at the Rouse Avenue Courts with a complaint, which that court rejected by the order he then challenged in revision.

The petitioner’s case

Appearing in person, the petitioner contended that the impugned order was contrary to the facts and the law and vitiated by malafides and abuse of power. He argued that the disciplinary action against him was relatable to his being a member of a Scheduled Caste, and that the respondent, in passing the order rejecting his complaint, had committed offences under the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989 and under Sections 166, 217, 218, 219 and 417 of the Indian Penal Code. He sought that the order be set aside, that punishment be imposed on the respondent, and that the matter be adjudicated afresh by an independent court.

The respondent opposed the petition as misconceived and not maintainable, submitting that the remedy against a BCI appellate order lies by way of an appeal to the Supreme Court under Section 38 of the Advocates Act; that the punishment was referable to the petitioner’s professional misconduct and had no connection with his caste; that no offence under the 1989 Act was made out; and that the petition was an abuse of the process of the Court.

The statutory remedy cannot be bypassed

The Court held that the view taken by the court below suffered from no infirmity. An order passed by the disciplinary committee of the BCI in appeal under Section 37 of the Advocates Act, it held, is amenable to challenge only by way of an appeal to the Supreme Court under Section 38, a position settled by the Supreme Court in Supreme Court Bar Association v. Union of India and O.N. Mohindroo v. Bar Council of Delhi. The petitioner, instead of availing that remedy, had sought to assail the disciplinary orders collaterally, through a petition seeking criminal action.

The Court also delineated the limits of its own revisional jurisdiction. The power under Sections 397 and 401 of the CrPC, it reiterated on the authority of Amit Kapoor v. Ramesh Chander, is supervisory in nature and is to be exercised only to correct a patent error of jurisdiction, an illegality or a perversity, none of which the impugned order disclosed.

On the caste-related contention, the Court’s reasoning aligned with the finding of the court below, which it extracted, that the punishment had been imposed for professional misconduct and had nothing to do with the petitioner’s being a member of a Scheduled Caste, and that to accept the contrary contention would mean that no member of a Scheduled Caste could ever be punished under the Advocates Act for professional misconduct, which is impermissible. Finding no scope for interference, and no basis for the reliefs sought, whether to unsettle the BCI order or to issue directions against the proposed accused, the Court dismissed the petition.

Why it matters

The order restates the self-contained character of the disciplinary appeal structure under the Advocates Act. The statute lays down a graded path, an inquiry by the State Bar Council’s Disciplinary Committee, an appeal to the Bar Council of India under Section 37, and a further appeal to the Supreme Court under Section 38, and that path is exhaustive. A litigant dissatisfied with a BCI appellate order cannot substitute a different forum or a different form of proceeding for the appeal the statute provides; the remedy is the Section 38 appeal, and nothing else answers.

What the petitioner attempted was a collateral attack, an effort to undo the disciplinary result not by appealing it but by launching a criminal proceeding against the judicial officer who had declined to interfere, dressed in the language of the SC/ST Act and the Penal Code. Courts are astute to such attempts, because they would allow the finality of a statutory adjudication to be circumvented and would turn an unsuccessful litigant’s disagreement into an accusation of criminality against the adjudicator. The revisional jurisdiction, confined as it is to jurisdictional error, illegality or perversity, is not a vehicle for that.

The Court’s treatment of the caste-based argument is also instructive, and was made with care. The invocation of the SC/ST Act cannot, by itself, convert a disciplinary punishment for professional misconduct into an act of caste-based persecution; there must be some foundation connecting the action to the protected characteristic, and here both courts found none, the misconduct finding standing on its own terms. The observation that the contrary view would immunise a member of a Scheduled Caste from disciplinary consequences for misconduct is not a dilution of the 1989 Act’s protections but a rejection of its use as a shield against unrelated professional accountability. The petitioner’s Section 38 remedy, if still open to him, remains the appropriate forum for any genuine grievance against the disciplinary orders.

Case Title: P. Balasubramaniyan v. Shri Vinay Kumar Gupta [CRL.REV.P. 613/2022]

Bench: Justice Purushaindra Kumar Kaurav, High Court of Delhi at New Delhi

Date of Order: September 14, 2026

Appearances: Petitioner in person. Advocates Preet Pal Singh, Simran Kumari, Pooja and Virat Raj Mishra for the respondent.

Status: Criminal revision petition dismissed. Challenge to the BCI disciplinary order held maintainable only by way of appeal to the Supreme Court under Section 38 of the Advocates Act.

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