Issue gazette on lower court judges’ conduct by Jan 15: SC

The Supreme Court has ordered the authorities concerned to issue a gazette notification on the disciplinary and conduct rules for lower court judges by January 15.

An eight-member bench of the Appellate Division headed by Chief Justice Surendra Kumar Sinha passed the order on Monday.

"You (AG) have wrongly explained the disciplinary and conduct rules to the President. We've not made any disciplinary and conduct rules for judicial officers and Bangladesh judicial service. We've just revised the ones provided by you as those were not consistent with the Masdar Hossain case," said the Chief Justice pointing at the Attorney General.

Earlier on Sunday, the President decided that there was no need for issuing any gazette notification on the drafts of the disciplinary and conduct rules for judicial officers and Bangladesh judicial service rules.

The Law, Justice and Parliamentary Affairs Ministry issued a circular in this regard.

On December 8, the Supreme Court summoned law and justice division secretary Abu Saleh Sk Md Zahirul Haque and legislative and parliamentary affairs division secretary Mohammad Shahidul Haque of the Law Ministry to appear before it on Monday (Dec 12) to explain the failure to publish notification in this regard.

On November 24, the Supreme Court gave the government one week to publish a gazette notification on the disciplinary rules for the judicial officers.

On December 2, 1999, the Supreme Court in the Masdar Hossain case issued a seven-point directive, including formulating separate disciplinary rules for the lower court judges.

However, the rules are yet to be formulated.

On May 7 last year, the Law Ministry sent the draft of the rules to the Supreme Court which is similar to the Government Servants (Discipline and Appeal) Rules 1985.

With UNB inputs