The Bar Council of India on Thursday issued a show cause notice to senior advocate Dushyant Dave for his comments against Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra and the collegium, Bar and Bench reported.

Calling Dave’s remarks derogatory and reckless, the council told him to file a reply within four weeks, after which it will decide on its further course of action.

Dave, who was the president of the Supreme Court Bar Association, had written and spoken on television against the collegium after the senior-most judge of the Karnataka High Court, Jayant Patel, resigned on Monday.

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Patel, who had ordered an inquiry by the Central Bureau of Investigation in the controversial Ishrat Jahan encounter case in Gujarat, stepped down after the Supreme Court collegium denied him the chance to be the chief justice of the Karnataka High Court. Instead, Patel was transferred to the Allahabad High Court where he would be the third senior-most judge.

The resignation triggered an uproar in the legal fraternity. Dave had argued that the collegium system does not work well for selecting judges. Those with good potential are often rejected because of personal enmity with a judge on the collegium and bad candidates are not stopped, he had said.

The Bar Council, in its statement, said, “The personal attack smacks of some personal vendetta against the chief justice of India, which amounts to gross misconduct.”

It added: “The chairman of the Bar Council of India has clarified that the council may not agree with the decision of the collegium with regard to Justice Jayant Patel, and it may join hands with the Gujarat High Court Advocates Association in the legal proceedings. But the baseless comments and statements of Dave on TV yesterday [Wednesday] is an attempt to malign the image of the judiciary and the institution.”