Bar Council of India (BCI)

After having left students on tenterhooks and without information for 7 days after the Supreme Court had unequivocally stayed the Bar Council of India (BCI) age limit on studying law, the Common Law Admission Test (CLAT) convenor CNLU Patna finally issued a formal notification that, in line with the decision of the apex court and two high courts, students over the age of 20 would indeed be able to study law.

The Bar Council of India (BCI) has quietly but significantly changed the All India Bar Exam (AIBE) syllabus since last time, possibly making it quite a bit harder, wrote iPleaders co-founder Abhyuday Aggarwal on Live Law yesterday.

The Supreme Court has issued an ad interim stay of the Bar Council of India (BCI) age limit today, and ordered the BCI that no age limit should apply to law aspirants seeking to study LLB.

The Supreme Court challenge of the Bar Council of India (BCI) age limit to studying law has given the BCI until Friday (3 March) to figure out its position after the BCI asked for more time because its general council would discuss the matter tomorrow at a meeting.

The Bar Council of India (BCI) managed to avoid a serious challenge to the revival of its LLB age bar on 20 February in the Supreme Court, when its counsel admitted that it does not apply to a petitioner who challenged it.

The Bar Council of India (BCI) has extended the deadline for registering for the 10th All India Bar Exam (AIBE) to be held on 26 March by a week, apparently after requests from candidates and state bar councils.

Supreme Court Justice SA Bobde, presiding over a bench with Justice L Nageswara Rao, told the Bar Council of India (BCI) today that it should reconsider the undergraduate law degree age limit of 20 years that it had foisted unexpectedly on law aspirants late last year.

ITES Horizon is back as the Bar Council of India’s (BCI) official contractor for the All India Bar Exam (AIBE). Or rather, it never left, despite the BCI chairman having confirmed in 2016 that the contract had expired and saying it would be put up for a tender.

The Delhi high court has bizarrely exempted state bar councils from the statutory duty to publish their meeting minutes online, on the ground that some of these minutes may contain third party information of a confidential nature.

Scoop: The Allahabad high court has today ordered the Common Law Admission Test (CLAT) convenor to allow around 70 aspirants older than 20 years to apply for the exam, despite the last minute rule change by the Bar Council of India (BCI), though the order is contingent on the pending Supreme Court challenge of the age limit, which we had first reported last week.

Supreme Court Justice Dipak Misra recused himself yesterday from hearing the writ petition by three petitioners, including by one Increasing Diversity by Increasing Access (IDIA) scholar who is an orphan, against the Bar Council of India (BCI) surprise resurrection of an age limit on studying law.

The law ministry has asked Bar Council of India (BCI) chairman Manan Kumar Mishra in a letter to help it create a list of lawyers who are willing to act pro bono in cases, which could end up being “one of the proposed yardstick (sic) to be considered for appointment as Judges of High Courts”.

General counsel (GCs) from at least 15 big Indian companies welcomed liberalisation in Indian legal services, and said that the Bar Council of India (BCI) was currently the “biggest bottleneck” to law firm liberalisation.

There have been numerous pending challenges and at least six high court judgments on the issue of whether the Bar Council of India (BCI) can impose a maximum age limit on law students (of which four judgments quashed the age limit and two upheld the BCI’s power to set one - see table above).

As reported by LiveLaw, the Bar Council of India (BCI) has resolved that all new law graduates would have to pay Rs 2,500 to state bar councils in order to verify their certificates for enrolment.

The Bar Council of India (BCI) has increased the fees of the All India Bar Exam (AIBE), which is obligatory for any law graduate who wants to practice law to pass, from Rs 2,500 per candidate to Rs 3,500 (with scheduled caste and tribe candidates remaining on Rs 2,500).

According to the Times of India Bar Council of India (BCI) chairman Manan Kumar Mishra told Supreme Court Justice JS Khehar last week at a party organised for the new Chief Justice of India (CJI):

Those who excitedly jumped in to register for the tenth All India Bar Exam (AIBE), that was “tentatively” postponed by a month to 26 March after registrations opened 12 days late on 16 January, weren’t set to go after all, according to a notification on the official AIBE website.