“The right to practise is a right to appear when engaged; it is not a right to be engaged.” With that line, the Patna High Court has held that a lawyer cannot sue client for defamation merely because the client ended the professional engagement, rejecting an advocate’s Rs 25 lakh suit against State Bank of India officers over his removal from the bank’s panel.
Patna: An advocate’s Rs 25 lakh defamation suit against officers of the State Bank of India (SBI) over his removal from the bank’s panel will not go to trial, the Patna High Court has held, ruling that a client who ends a professional engagement or removes an advocate from a panel exercises a legal right and makes no defamatory imputation by doing so [Assistant General Manager, State Bank of India and Others v. Mantosh Prasad Sinha].
Justice Ramesh Chand Malviya allowed the civil revision filed by the SBI officers, set aside the order of the Sub-Judge-III, Jamui, dated October 17, 2024, and rejected the plaint in Title (Defamation) Suit No. 137 of 2020 under Order VII Rule 11(a) of the Code of Civil Procedure (CPC). The CAV order was delivered on October 27, 2026.
Why the Jamui court’s order could not stand
The High Court began with the trial court’s approach. That court had confined itself to clause (d) of Order VII Rule 11 and had not examined whether the plaint disclosed a cause of action at all, which amounted to a failure to exercise jurisdiction. Since the question was a pure question of law and the suit had been pending since 2020, the Court decided it itself rather than remanding the matter.
Explaining the ingredients of defamation, the Court said the law protects reputation against false and harmful imputations published to others, and not against every consequence of a lawful act:
“It does not compensate for every reputational or financial consequence that follows from a lawful act, such as the termination of a contract or of a professional engagement. The act of ending a relationship is not, by itself, a statement about the person with whom the relationship is ended.”
On the advocate’s statutory right under Sections 29 and 30 of the Advocates Act, 1961, the Court drew a clear line:
“The right to practise is a right to appear when engaged; it is not a right to be engaged.”
Treating a vakalatnama as an agency revocable by the principal under Section 203 of the Indian Contract Act, 1872, the Court added:
“No law requires a client to give reasons for disengaging an advocate, and the exercise of that freedom, whether by withdrawing a vakalatnama, by engaging a fresh counsel or by removing an advocate from a panel, is the exercise of a legal right. It is not, of itself, an imputation upon the advocate.”
Relying on the Supreme Court’s July 2026 ruling in Ajay Vijh v. Indian Banks’ Association, the Court noted that a bank’s relationship with its panel advocate is contractual and that an advocate has no right to be empanelled or continued. It also noted the limit drawn in that ruling: a bank may lawfully remove an advocate from its panel, but publicly declaring the advocate incompetent or dishonest to others is a separate matter. No such public declaration by the bank was pleaded in this case.
The panel, the title report and the suit
The plaintiff, advocate Mantosh Prasad Sinha, was on SBI’s panel for the Jamui Civil Court from 1983 to 2018. According to the plaint, a title deed on which he had given a title investigation report was later examined by another panel advocate, who opined that the document was not genuine. Sinha alleged that he was de-panelled on the basis of that opinion, and that this lowered his prestige, dignity and reputation and caused him financial loss and mental agony, which he quantified at Rs 25,00,000.
Before filing the suit, Sinha had filed a criminal complaint under Section 500 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) over the de-panelment. The trial court dismissed it in January 2020, a revisional court allowed his revision in February 2020, and that order was stayed by the High Court in May 2022 in a quashing application that remains pending.
The bank officers filed a petition in May 2024 seeking rejection of the plaint on the grounds that its averments did not constitute defamation and that no cause of action arose against them. The Jamui court rejected that petition, holding that the officers had not identified the law barring the suit and that their objections were curable procedural irregularities.
What each side argued
Senior Advocate Chitranjan Sinha, for the bank officers, argued that de-panelment is neither a crime nor harmful to an advocate’s reputation, that government and institutional counsel are routinely changed without defamation cases being filed, and that the bank acts on the report of its panel advocate. Relying on R.D. Saxena v. Balram Prasad Sharma, he submitted that a litigant is free to change his advocate.
Counsel for Sinha argued that a bank letter of December 7, 2018 had described him as a fraud over his 2014 title report, that the deed had later been found genuine in a police case, that the letter was circulated to the court before his de-panelment, and that the petition for rejection of the plaint was filed four years late, after the plaintiff’s evidence had closed, only to delay the trial.
Why the plaint failed
The Court gave three reasons. First, de-panelment is a decision to discontinue an engagement and carries no imputation under Section 499 IPC. Second, the statement said to have been circulated was attributed to an unnamed “newly appointed lawyer of the Bank”, who was not a party, with only a bare claim that it was made “on the instance of the defendants”. Third, the plaint did not plead when, to whom or on what occasion anything was published, using only general phrases such as “in the court as well as in the Bar” and “murmuring everywhere”.
The Court held that the bank’s December 2018 letter could not be used to improve the cause of action through oral submissions, since the plaint was founded on the de-panelment and not on that letter. It expressed no view on the genuineness of the deed or on the competing title reports, and clarified that its observations did not touch the pending quashing application or the complaint case.
“The Court does not doubt that the loss of a panel engagement held for about thirty-five years is a matter of real distress to an advocate. But hurt feelings and damaged ego are not defamation.”
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The outcome
The civil revision was allowed, the Jamui court’s order of October 17, 2024 was set aside, the bank officers’ petition of May 30, 2024 was allowed, and the plaint was rejected under Order VII Rule 11(a) CPC. No costs were imposed.
Why the order matters
The ruling restates that defamation needs two things: an imputation about a person and its publication to someone else. A loss of work, income or standing that flows from a lawful decision, such as ending a contract or a brief, is not defamation by itself. For advocates, it makes clear that the statutory right to practise guarantees the right to appear when briefed, not a right to be briefed or retained by any client, including a bank.
The order also shows how Order VII Rule 11 works as a filter at any stage of a suit. Courts must read the plaint as a whole and ask whether it pleads the ingredients of the claimed wrong, with material facts on who said what, to whom and when. Vague claims that something “spread like anything” will not carry a defamation suit to trial, though a separate, properly pleaded public imputation against an advocate can still give rise to liability.
Case Title: Assistant General Manager, State Bank of India, Regional Office, Bhagalpur and Others v. Mantosh Prasad Sinha
Case No.: Civil Revision No. 186 of 2024
Bench: Justice Ramesh Chand Malviya, Patna High Court
Date of Order: October 27, 2026
Appearances: Senior Advocate Chitranjan Sinha with Advocate Rakesh Kumar Singh for the petitioners; Advocate Pankaj Kumar Sinha for the opposite party
