legalera: New Delhi: Tuesday,
April 12, 2016.
The Delhi
High Court has asked for response of Information Commissioner M A Khan Yusufi
on a plea challenging his decision to bar appearance of a lawyer before his
bench and intended that none of the cases corresponded by the advocate will be
listed before Yusufi.
The High
Court also stayed the orders issued by Yusufi against lawyer P Roychaudhuri who
had suspected before the High Court that he was not allowed to give any
explanation by the Information Commissioner and was asked to “get out of the
room” at the beginning of hearing.
Justice
Manmohan said in his order, “Respondent no.3 (Yusufi) is directed to give his
comments to the writ petition on the administrative side…. In the meantime,
learned CIC is directed to list all cases of the petitioner before an
Information Commissioner, other than respondent no 3.”
Yusufi had
barred the appearance of Roychaudhuri ahead his bench citing that he has not
discharged his duties as an advocate.
Former Chief
Information Commissioner A N Tiwari, said, “It is incorrect and impractical.
RTI Act does not give any power to Information Commissioners to ban a lawyer
from appearing. There are ways and means to handle errant lawyers but certainly
they cannot be banned from pleading a case before the Commission.”
In the case
of Roychaudhuri, Yusufi had passed the order underlining that the lawyer,
appeared before him “without complete official records” of the case and he was
not accompanied either by the CPIO concerned or First Appellate Authority
despite directions in his earlier orders.
“In view of
this, the Commission feels that, in the interest of work and even after
observing the principles of natural justice, it would be appropriate and even
justified to ban the appearance of Roychaudhuri, Learned Advocate, before this
Bench, immediately.
“Therefore,
the appearance of P Roychaudhuri, Learned Advocate, before this Bench, is
hereby banned henceforth,” he said in the contentious order.
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