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BCI postpones 10th AIBE till further notice, not yet decided by council

From presumed indefinite delays to notified indefinite delays - is this the last of badly held BCI exams or is it heralding new lows

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Thanks for visiting, 'keep visiting'

The 10th All India Bar Exam (AIBE) is not even in the pipeline almost nine months after the 9th AIBE, after the Bar Council of India (BCI) notified on the official AIBE website that it has not yet decided the exam date and that candidates should “kindly keep visiting” the AIBE website for further update.

A notification dated 24 October 2016, which only appears to have been uploaded recently, on the AIBE’s website, states:

AIBE-X EXAMINATION DATE ( Notification No: AIBE/WS/074 ) (24th October, 2016) The next date for AIBE-X exam is not yet decided by the council.It will be notified on our website and council’s website as soon as the decision is taken .Kindly keep visiting our website for any further updates on the same.

The most recent update on the AIBE website’s homepage was yesterday, according to archive.org, despite the notification – which is the top notification on the page – having been dated 24 October.

The AIBE’s official website was offline for “maintenance” in mid-June, around two weeks after BCi chairman Manan Kumar Mishra said that the bar exam contract with unqualified contractor ITES Horizon had expired.

We have reached out to Mishra for comment on the reasons for the delay and whether this indecision is due to the expiry of ITES’ contract and the lack of an AIBE contractor since then, whether the process for selection of a new contractor has begun and what criteria will be followed in the selection this time.

In 2012, the BCI contracted the exam out to ITES who won over several other qualified bidders who were cheaper and had a better track record.

The AIBE has experienced significant delays in every single edition since 2012, around the same time the fees charged by the BCI for the exam rose by nearly 100 per cent, candidates were deprived of study materials and candidate database suffered cyber-security breaches, as previously reported by us.

However, the BCI has submitted before the Supreme Court that in light of its track record of running the AIBE in “most efficient and transparent manner”, it should be put in charge of running a common law entrance test for all law colleges and universities in India as well.

Full disclosure: In 2015 the BCI has sent a legal notice to Legally India for our critical reporting on the AIBE (though not taken any further action after our reply), and more recently called Legally India's editor a “small mosquito… attempting to spread Dengue”, threatening in an email that BCI “members will take care of you”.

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