Supreme Court: Mishra is only pro tem at BCI — AG and SG must sit on policy

The Supreme Court on 2 September 2026 told the Bar Council of India that Manan Kumar Mishra is only a “pro tem” chairperson until fresh elections, confined to day-to-day functioning, with his term co-terminus with those elections.

The three-judge bench of Chief Justice of India Surya Kant and Justices Joymalya Bagchi and V. Mohana also directed that the Attorney-General and the Solicitor-General, as permanent ex-officio members of the BCI, must get prior notice and be invited into any decision with a policy impact.

Young lawyers who petitioned the Court had pointed to the BCI Pearl First Trust of 2020, with Mishra — a Bharatiya Janata Party Rajya Sabha member — and office-bearers as permanent managing trustees; a Trust arrangement with the Goa government for a university on 56 acres; felicitation spends “running into crores”; and tenure extended to five years. A Gazette of 21 April 2025 notified chair and vice-chair tenure till 16 April 2030, against Rule 12(2)’s maximum of two years. The current term is from 17 April 2025. Counsel Shobha Gupta told the Court Mishra has been in the chair uninterrupted since November 2014.

A separate flashpoint was NALSAR. An attempt to ban the 2026 enrolment followed students objecting, at a convocation, to Chief Justice Kant’s earlier “cockroaches/parasites” remarks. Mishra apologised. The Chief Justice backed the students’ right to protest.

BCI counsel welcomed concurrence of the Attorney-General and Solicitor-General and had that recorded as an undertaking. The bench’s phrase was that it was looking at institutions, not individuals.

High Court Chief Justices were told to co-opt two women members to each State Bar Council within a fortnight. State Bar Councils must notify composition within a week, then elect chair, vice-chair, office-bearers and one BCI representative within three weeks. The case is listed at the end of September after BCI composition.

A “pro tem” label on a chair occupied since 2014 is the Court’s way of ending an uninterrupted run without writing a personal indictment in the same breath. Prior notice to the AG and SG is a structural check: policy that used to move inside a small BCI room must now copy the Union’s law officers. The Pearl First Trust, the 56-acre Goa university, crores in felicitations, a Gazette stretching tenure to 2030 against a two-year rule — those are the petitioners’ facts placed on the 2 September record, not findings of guilt in this order as locked here.

The NALSAR enrolment-ban attempt sits beside the BCI file as a reminder that student protest over the Chief Justice’s own words became a bar-council weapon, then an apology, then a judicial defence of protest. The Court is hearing BCI composition; it is not, in this locked record, retrying the convocation remarks.

For State Bar Councils, the fortnight to co-opt two women, the week to notify, and the three weeks to elect are a clock. For Mishra, day-to-day functioning until elections is a reduced brief. For this edition, the established order is pro tem status, AG/SG policy notice, the undertaking, the women-member timeline, the end-September listing, and the petitioners’ Trust, Gazette and tenure facts as placed before the bench.