Bar Council of India (BCI)

Exclusive: The Bar Council of India (BCI) Trust, which conducts the BCI inter-university moot court competition, has decided to indefinitely delay this year’s competition.

All India Bar Exam (AIBE) candidates’ results for more test centres would be uploaded within two or three days, though it will take longer to announce grades of candidates’ whose results have been withheld.

The New York Times’ India Ink blog has interviewed the Bar Council of India (BCI) chairman Manan Kumar Mishra who said that around 4,000 complaints were pending with the BCI, which is the state bar councils’ appellate body for disciplinary cases, while around 1.7 million lawyers were enrolled.

To make public prosecutors eligible for district judiciary posts, the Supreme Court said they would be treated as advocates, despite the Bar Council of India’s (BCI) prohibition against lawyers who are full-time salaried employees from practising as advocates.

Rule 49 of the BCI’s rules on professional standards provides:

An Advocate shall not be a full-time salaried employee of any person, government, firm, corporation or concern, so long as he continues to practise and shall, on taking up any such employment intimate the fact to the Bar Council on whose rolls his name appears, and shall thereupon cease to practise as an Advocate so long as he continues in such employment.

The bench, led by justice RM Lodha, partially negated this requirement and said:

The factum of employment is not material but the key aspect is whether such employment is consistent with his practising as an advocate. Or, in other words, whether pursuant to such employment, he continues to act and/or plead in the courts. If the answer is yes, then despite employment he continues to be an advocate.

The SC was deciding appeals filed against the orders of the High Court of Punjab and Haryana which had quashed the appointments of certain additional district and sessions judges on the basis of rule 49 in May 2010. [Indian Express]

The Bar Council of India (BCI) has begun uploading results for the fourth All India Bar Exam (AIBE).

The Bar Council of India (BCI) launched an advocates pension scheme under which all advocates in Bihar with at least 30 years of practicing experience will get a monthly pension of Rs 5000, even if they are above 65 years of age.

To avail the benefit of the scheme, advocates under the age of 30 years will have to deposit a one-time fee of Rs 7,000, and those above the age of 30 years will have to deposit Rs 10,000 once with the BCI, as well as regularly purchase the BCI’s journals. [UNI]

Breaking: The Bar Council of India (BCI) today retracted its 5 January request to the administrators of all Indian law schools to reserve at least two seats in each course for BCI nominees.

Breaking: The Bar Council of India (BCI) has sent a letter to the administrators of all Indian law schools, asking them to reserve two places on each course for BCI nominees.

In last week’s Mint: Most non-lawyers will not have heard of AIBE, but one week this month, more people in India searched Google for the term than for Sonia Gandhi, according to Google Trends. As a pure exercise in branding, the less than two-year-old AIBE—or to use its full name, the All India Bar Examination—should be considered a huge success for the Bar Council of India (BCI). That can’t be said of the exam itself.

The All India Bar Exam (AIBE) was cancelled mid-way yesterday at the exam centre in Jaipur, Rajasthan due to a shortage of around 900 question papers and was conducted incompletely, but not cancelled, at Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh’s centre where there were 300 papers too little.

Breaking: The fourth All India Bar Examination (AIBE) in Delhi’s nearest test centre in Noida, saw 500 candidates turn up beyond the expected 3,200 candidates for whom seating was planned, while most candidates finished the exam early and reported a fairly low difficulty level.

The Bar Council of India (BCI) has published the full list of 59 All India Bar Exam (AIBE) test venues – increased from 44 venues in the first exam – and clarified that those examinees who have been unable to download their admit cards, could sit the exam after showing four documents.

Hall passes for the fourth AIBE that will take place in five days (9 December) are now available for download via the official AIBE website, with an enrolment or application number.

AIBE website admit card download link.

Please do share your experience in the comments.{jcomments off}

The admit cards for the 9 December All India Bar Examination (AIBE) which were scheduled to be uploaded on the AIBE’s website yesterday, will now be uploaded tomorrow as per a modification in Sunday’s notification on the Bar Council of India’s (BCI) website.

Breaking: The Bar Council of India (BCI) has promised that identification cards allowing All India Bar Exam (AIBE) candidates to enter the exam hall will be uploaded on Monday (3 December), while also confirming that the exam would be a three-hour open book exam - half-an-hour shorter than the first three exams.

The Bar Council of India (BCI) has published sample questions for the upcoming 9 December All India Bar Exam (AIBE), which focuses heavily on general knowledge and history, while having changed the number of questions per topic.

Bar Council of India (BCI) chairman Manan Kumar Mishra in an insightful interview with legal website Bar & Bench reiterated his strong opposition to the entry of foreign law firms, noted that the BCI had been cancelling licenses for around 10 law schools per meeting, expressed a grouse against law teachers and promised to bring law firm misconduct under the BCI’s scanner with the Society of Indian Law Firms (SILF).

Bar Council of India (BCI) chairman Manan Kumar Mishra revealed in an interview with legal website Bar & Bench today that its All India Bar Exam (AIBE) contractor ITES Horizon could get paid up to Rs 2.1 crore ($378,000) for assisting with the exam, while parts of BCI revenues from the exam would go to the welfare of lawyers.

He added that the BCI would not provide any study materials this time and would release model questions three or four days before the exam on 9 December.

The Bar Council of India’s (BCI) homepage domain name registration lapsed yesterday (26 November) making the legal regulator’s site temporarily inaccessible. However, the regulator’s website should now be online again throughout the day as this morning's re-registration of the domain by the BCI is being propagated across of the world.

The BCI’s website also went offline in 2010, after the domain name registration had lapsed. Last week the All India Bar Exam (AIBE) website was inaccessible for three days.

Breaking: The Bar Council of India (BCI) released a statement on its website that candidates who have enrolled as an advocate between 17 and 24 November 2012, could still register for the All India Bar Exam (AIBE) until 24 November.