Bar Counci Of India Row Sadasiva Reddy Seeks Manan Kumar Mishra Resignation

Bar Council of India (BCI) Co‑Chairman and Senior Advocate Y R Sadasiva Reddy on Saturday urged Chairman Manan Kumar Mishra to resign, saying “the Bar of this country deserves better than what it is presently receiving from its own council”. He also accused Mishra of mismanagement, nepotism, and fund diversion.

In his six-page letter to Mishra, Reddy said, “I hold no personal animosity towards you. I have served alongside you on this Council for a decade. It is precisely because I have watched this institution from within for that period that I am able to say, with a clear conscience, that it will not recover while you remain in the Chair. Standing down now, on your own accord, is the one course still open to you that would be to your credit.”

The Indian Express tried contacting Mishra, but he did not respond to calls or messages.

Mishra was embroiled in a controversy after he issued a directive on August 13, asking state Bar councils not to enrol students from the 2026 batch of NALSAR (National Academy of Legal Studies and Research) University of Law, Hyderabad, following a campaign opposing CJI Surya Kant being invited to the university convocation. Mishra later withdrew the circular, saying the BCI had closed the proceedings after concluding that the students had “no role in any disturbance or movement”.

In the letter, Reddy said that the direction issued against the graduating batch of NALSAR University was issued without material being placed before the BCI, without the Council deliberating upon it, and without any resolution authorising it. “I was not consulted. To the best of my knowledge, the Council as a body was not consulted. The office of Chairman was used to threaten the entire graduating batch of law students, young men/women with no power and no voice—with exclusion from the profession, as a reprisal for having held an opinion,” Reddy said.

Reddy said the BCI exists to defend the independence of the Bar and cannot punish independence of thought. “This action by Mishra has done more damage to the standing of this Council than anything else in its history, and it is by itself sufficient ground for Mishra to demit office,” the letter reads.

On Mishra’s tenure as BCI chairman for over a decade, the letter states, “You have held office continuously since 2012, and were returned for a further consecutive term in 2025. This is without precedent. An elected office that has one occupant for fourteen years has ceased, in any real sense, to be an elected office.”

Reddy also alleged that during Mishra’s tenure, factions were created and sustained within state Bar Councils, and alleged that key positions in institutions run by the Council are held by people from Mishra’s own family.

He further alleged that the Bar Council of India Trust was an institution of standing. But the Trust was, over a period, allowed to fall into disuse. Reddy claimed that in its place, a new trust—‘BCI Trust PEARL First’—was registered on September 17, 2020, with trustees chosen by Mishra. A resolution was also moved to transfer Rs 150 crore of Bar Council of India funds to the newly created trust, he alleged.

Further, Reddy claimed that he has received regular and credible complaints from more than one state alleging that managements of new law colleges approaching the Bar Council of India for approval, and managements of existing colleges approaching it for renewal, are being required to make “contributions” to the said trust, in amounts ranging from Rs 25 lakh to Rs 50 lakh to Rs 1 crore.

Referring to a protest by advocates outside the BCI office demanding Mishra’s resignation. Reddy said, “Young advocates, who have the most to gain from a functioning Council and the most to lose from a captured one, have led those protests. When the regulator of a profession is publicly repudiated by the profession, it regulates, by the students it is meant to nurture, and by the courts before which it appears, the question of its Chairman’s continuance is no longer a matter of personal preference. It is a question of institutional survival.”

Reddy demanded that a special meeting of the Bar Council of India be held. He also requested a special audit of the accounts of the BCI and ‘BCI Trust PEARL First’ by an independent firm empanelled with the Comptroller and Auditor General of India.