The Bar Council of India (BCI) has announced 16 August 2020 as the date for the next All India Bar Exam (AIBE).

Online registration is due to begin from 16 May 2020 until 27 July 2020, with admit cards to be released on 9 August.

Other competitive exams to be held this summer are currently scheduled for June, with the LSAT-India having planned an online exam for 14 June.

A physical Common Law Admission Test (CLAT) is still due to happen on 21 June, though it’s already had two postponements.

Let’s hope that by August things will be back to business as usual.

But, as usual in recent years, the BCI has explicitly spelled out in a waiver that it will not entertain refunds of fees or other complaints if the exam should be postponed.

The BCI’s bar exam department has also officially been closed since 19 March 2020 until 17 May, with the main phone line also not available (though an emergency mobile phone number hotline, for what it’s worth, is available, according to the BCI’s resolutions, the latest of which was passed on 3 May - see below).

If that was not warning enough, the strong track records of postponements and organisational delays that the BCI’s bar exam enjoys, even without extraordinary Covid-19 circumstances to contend with, suggest that 16 August may very well be a very tentative date right now.

More information available on the official AIBE website.