Bar Council of India (BCI)

The Bar Council of India (BCI) has suspended 15 lawyers who were allegedly involved in violence in the Madras high court, reported The Hindu and others.

The Indian judiciary has been grappling with the question of whether to permit foreign lawyers to practice in India for more than two decades. After yesterday’s hearing in the Supreme Court, it doesn’t look like any end is in sight.

As Common Cause vs Abhijat & Others came up before Justices Kurian Joseph and Arun Mishra at court No.13 on Friday (September 11) morning, Justice Arun Mishra tried to persuade Prashant Bhushan, counsel for Common Cause, not to go ahead with the contempt petition, as it would not serve any purpose. Justice Mishra said the onus is on the bar, which has to control the striking lawyers. “You have to discipline yourself”, he told Bhushan.

NLUO Cuttack is opaque about its examination rules despite requests for clarity, alleged three NLUO LLM who had been debarred from taking their end of semester examinations for apparent shortage of attendance.

The Bar Council of India (BCI) has extended the deadline for advocates to register for its certificate of practice until 31 December 2015, following a stay of the advocates’ registration requirement by the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court on Wednesday stayed the new Bar Council of India’s (BCI) Certificate and Place of Practice (Verification) Rules 2015 that it had passed in January 2015.

Pitching for the introduction of an animal rights subject to law schools’ syllabuses, the Indian Express reported that:

Union Law Minister Sadananda Gowda has written to the Bar Council of India chairman to include books written by his cabinet colleague Maneka Gandhi on animal rights in the curriculum of law schools and colleges. Gandhi, the Union Women and Child Development Minister, is also an animal rights activist.

Gowda wrote to BCI chairman Manan Kumar Mishra, according to the Express:

leaving aside the meat consumption issue for the time being, we need to sensitize our citizens about cruelty caused by us to animals in many forms while using them for farming purpose, religious activities, sports activities, recreational activities like circus and while transporting animals etc. We need to make lawyers acquire comprehensive knowledge on various laws governing animal rights and prevention of cruelty to animals. The best way to start forward is to include these aspects in the curriculum of law colleges.

I am herewith attaching a list of Acts pertaining to animal rights and also the books written by Smt Maneka Gandhi for including the same in the curriculum on law schools and colleges.

According to the Express, a number of professors, including NLU Delhi vice chancellor Ranbir Singh and former Delhi University law faculty dean SN Singh, objected to the letter arguing that animal welfare laws were covered in environmental law courses, while the government had no business recommending any particular book to be taught, which was the exclusive preserve of each law school.

Bar Council of India (BCI) chairman Manan Kumar Mishra, who is also the Bihar State Bar Council’s (BSBC) representative at BCI, apologised to the Patna high court for the “mistakes” of the BSBC as the court admonished the BSBC for calling a state-wide lawyer strike on July 15, reported the Times of India.

Chief justice L Narasimha Reddy and justice Anjana Mishra observed that the BSBC had “tarnished the image of the legal profession”, through its call to strike against corruption in the lower judiciary, even though the cause of its strike was “laudable”. The observation came as the bench was hearing an unrelated case.

Mishra appeared before the bench to apologise.

Delhi University’s (DU) law colleges are looking at an indefinite delay in beginning recruitment interviews for more than 100 vacant teaching positions the university had advertised on 9 June.

Kian Ganz looks into the BCI’s latest claim that 30 per cent of lawyers are not really lawyers and asks, how the BCI knows.

The results for the eighth All India Bar Exam (AIBE) have been published on the official AIBE website.

If advocates have not passed the Bar Council of India (BCI) All India Bar Exam (AIBE) within three years of enrolment, their advocates licence “has to be necessarily revoked”, held a Madras high court bench of chief justice SK Kaul and Justice TS Sivagnanam, reported The Hindu.

The bench added that the BCI should also do surprise spot inspections of colleges to find those that that award “dubious” law degrees. Petitioner and advocate V Ramesh had claimed in his plea that the profession had been polluted by advocates with fake degrees bought from fake colleges.

Commerce ministry Rajeev Kher held a press conference yesterday, saying that the government had begun talks about opening up the transactional legal services sector and India-based international arbitration, having drawn in law firm lobby group Society of Indian Law Firms (Silf) and the regulator Bar Council of India (BCI).