PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 305
bring about the unification of the Bar in India which is a subject at the heart of many Members here. I will, therefore, not go into that aspect of the question.
Then there remains only one question which was raised by my friend Pandit Thakurdas Bhargava which also, I think, is quite outside the merits of the Bill. There is no doubt about it that anything that we do here in Parliament must always be subject to the provisions of the Constitution. If article 22 of the Constitution permits a legal practitioner to be engaged by an accused person to defend himself and if by the rules of enrolment enforced either by the High Court or by the Supreme Court a certain person does not become a legal practitioner within the meaning of the Constitution, in my mind there can be no doubt that the rules made by the High Court or by the Supreme Court would be at variance with the Article of the Constitution and the Constitution would prevail. At this moment all I would like to say is that I am not quite certain in my mind in what sense the term ‘legal practitioner’ is used in the Constitution. Whether it is used in the general popular sense that anybody who can go to a court of law and appear in any matter is a legal practitioner, or whether the Constitution uses the term in the technical sense that a legal practitioner means a person defined to be a legal practitioner either in the Legal Practitioners Act or in the rules made by the High Court or the Supreme Court, is a matter on which I do not propose to express any opinion. My friend Pandit Thakur Das will also realise that even the Legal Practitioners Act does not give the general right to practise to all those who are defined as legal practitioners. There are fields which are earmarked or rather which are limited to certain classes. For instance the pleaders and the mukhtiars are no doubt legal practitioners within the meaning of the Act, but as he knows they have no general right to practise, nor is their right to practise a permanent one. Their certificates are annual certificates and when these certificates are exhausted they cease to be legal practitioners. All these things to my mind are quite irrelevant for the purposes of the Bill and they will no doubt take care of themselves when the matter is raised before a court of law. I do not think there is any other thing that calls for any explanation.