The case of lawyer and PRM vice-president R Sivarasa, who is appealing to retain his position in the Bar Council, has been postponed after a Court of Appeal judge disqualified himself from the hearing.

The hearing today was deferred to a date to be announced later when one of the three judges on the bench, KC Vohrah, decided to recluse himself from the proceedings. However, he did not give any reasons for his decision.

Sivarasa's case before a three-member Court of Appeal panel - Vohrah, Abdul Hamid Mohamad and Mohd Noor Ahmad - was to appeal against the Kuala Lumpur High Court's decision on Aug 22 that quashed his challenge to Section 46(A) of the Legal Profession Act which prohibits Bar Council members from holding political posts.

Sivarasa filed his application on Aug 8 to prevent his disqualification from his position as a member of the Bar Council, naming the Malaysian Bar and the government as respondents.

He joined PRM on May 3, 1999 and served as the party's legal adviser in June the same year. He was elected to the central committee and as vice-president on July 14 this year during the party's annual national congress.

Court told to hold early hearing

Sivarasa's counsel, Tommy Thomas, later hastened the court to set a hearing before the end of October as Sivarasa was seeking to be nominated for next year's Bar Council election.

"We also would like the court to hear the merits of this case by Oct 31 so that the court would offer him an interim order to be a candidate for the upcoming Bar Council elections," he said.

Justice Abdul Hamid then said that he would be asking the court's registrar to meet with Court of Appeal president Wan Adnan Wan Ismail to set a date.

The Bar Council was represented by Cyrus V Das and Steve Thiru, and the government, senior federal counsel Alice Loke.

In the wake of Sivarasa's application, a group of 75 lawyers had requisitioned for an extraordinary general meeting of the Malaysian Bar to censure the Bar leadership for allegedly contradicting a Bar resolution passed in 1978, which criticised the government for amending the Legal Profession Act to include the controversial section.

However, the meeting on Sept 28 was cancelled for lack of a quorum.