In his letter addressed to the newly appointed Chief Justice of India Uday Umesh Lalit, Supreme Court Bar Association President Vikas Singh attracted his attention to a few problems which the Top Court was facing. One of them is the lack of proper space in the Annexe Building. He requested him to allot additional space for Supreme Court Bar Association for constructing a three-storey building for offering lunch, while a separate storey should be earmarked for constructing a library room for the Bar Association President. Apart from this, the second storey of the bar room will be reserved for women lawyers as well as for the Executive Committee Secretary. It will also serve as a Meeting Room for the Supreme Court Bar Association committee.
It is remarkable to note that former Chief Justice of India, Dipak Misra, had assured Vikas Singh that the SCBA would receive exclusive use of the entire Annexe Building in front of Court no. 11. Taking a cue from this, Vikas Singh reminded the current Chief Justice of India about former Chief Justices’ assurance that the annex structure will be made available to the Bar Association once the new Appu Ghar Complex building was shifted to another place, where the Registry was supposed to relocate. However, as additional space was earmarked for the Appu Ghar, the SCBA couldn’t receive any space there.
The SCBA President then made reference to an earlier letter which he had written on 29.08.2022 in this regard in which he had requested that the distribution of the three chambers of Appu Ghar Complex leading to the bar Council of India, as well as the 26 chambers, should be set aside from reservation, and all 29 chambers are supplied to the SCBA so that the bar members may use it.
While giving utmost priority to the issue, he also wrote in this letter. “Our members intend to sit on a dharna denouncing this” the statement reads. On my promise that the issue is under such allotment, taking the Honorable Chief Justice into account.
Vikas Singh informed the newly appointed Chief Justice that the Chief Justice of India is authorized to assign chambers based on the Committee recommendation and that the Committee was never asked to consider assigning a chamber to the BCI. Therefore, any such assignment is invalid and subject to recall. He also mentioned that it was further requested that the SCBA members use three sizable empty halls in the Additional Buildings D-Block as cubicles. He also wrote in his letter that the 7-8 large halls in the E-Block that were empty be converted into either chambers or cubicles.
