Bar Council of India (BCI)
Exclusive: After a three-day outage, the allindiabarexamination.com website would be online again within hours, the Bar Council of India secretary told Legally India, while ITES Horizon Pvt Ltd, the company contracted by the BCI to assist on the All India Bar Exam (AIBE), has not been possible to contact.
The Bar Council of India extended the deadline for submission of the application form for the now postponed 9 December AIBE.
The notification for postponement of the AIBE to 9 December now reads:
It is to notify that, due to unavoidable reason, Muharram and several requests received from candidates, the date of All India Bar Examination is extended to 9th December, 2012. The Exam would now be held on 9th December, 2012. Accordingly, last date for submission of application form and deposit of examination fee is also extended upto 15th November, 2012 and last date for receipt of duly filled in application form in the office of the Bar Council of India is extended upto 20th November, 2012. It is clarified that in no case application forms received in the office of the Bar Council of India after 20th November, 2012 be accepted. [BCI]
Full disclosure & sponsored link: BarHacker.in is a bar exam preparation service with a 100% pass rate, that is jointly owned by iPleaders and Legally India.
Three persons of Indian origin holding foreign undergraduate degrees in law registered for this year’s Bar Council of India (BCI) qualifying exam to practice in India, but only one – an LLB degree holder from Cambridge University - passed.
Breaking: The Bar Council of India (BCI) has postponed the All India Bar Exam (AIBE) scheduled for 25 November 2012, to 9 December because of a religious event and candidates’ requests.
Karnataka State Law University (KSLU) disallows LLM degree-holders from colleges not affiliated with it, from being appointed as law teachers in the university, if they have obtained their LLM degree after year 2011.
Local community president alleges that KSLU is itself not recognised by the BCI and the UGC.
The circular affects hundreds of post-graduates from the Bangalore University, Gulbarga and Mysore [Deccan Herald]
A Right to Information (RTI) request has revealed that the Bar Council of India (BCI) entered into a wide-ranging letter of intent (LOI) with legal industry services provider Rainmaker in 2010, not just to conduct the All India Bar Exam (AIBE) but also to cross-promote other products of the company. However, according to Rainmaker, the majority of that LOI was never implemented.
Breaking: The Bar Council of India’s (BCI) new contractor has launched a standalone website for All India Bar Exam (AIBE) takers to register for the next exam that is scheduled for 25 November, with fees for the exam having been hiked by around 50 per cent to Rs 1,950 for first time examinees.
“How dare you?” she demanded, at which point he apparently retorted by saying: “I can do it again.” He followed that up by demonstrating his words — reaching out in the court office and touching her breast in front of an audience of 30-odd lawyers. The lady lawyer, feeling outraged, slapped him. The male lawyer slapped her back.
This exchange was behind-the-scenes for this petition to the SC by a group of female lawyers for implementing the Visakha judgement in courts. The male lawyer was punished with seven days imprisonment and was prohibited from entering the courts for a few months, “but no one could confirm that the punishment was carried out”, reports columnist Sunetra Choudhury.
A young female lawyer found herself at the receiving end of some unwarranted attention. He asked her to marry him, which she dismissed as a joke… He’d crossed over to a stalker. When he sent her a message that said,”I want to play with your blood”, she realized she had to report him before it was too late. But how was she to complain?
It took some persuasion by the junior lawyer for the Bar Council to help her with her reported complaint. They organised a hearing face-to-face with her harasser and concluded with: “madam we have discussed, ab theek hai na? (is it okay now?)”.
And then there’s the Sexual Harassment Bill providing to impose a fine on women who make false complaints. Not the best for junior lawyers harassed by seniors with established reputation. [Firstpost via MeghaA_11]
Mumbai University’s law colleges have still not updated their course-curriculum in accordance with the year-2008 legal education regulations of the Bar Council of India (BCI). This was discovered when a law student of the university filed right to information requests to the university.
A Mumbai University official says:
Aided law colleges are already running into losses. They do not have enough teachers for existing programmes.
Colleges are worried about the unaided subjects for which they will need additional faculty. Colleges cannot take the extra burden of these new subjects prescribed by the BCI, when running the existing courses itself is a daunting task. [TOI]
The Bar Council of India (BCI) said it would reconsider its May resolution making it compulsory for law teachers to pay a recurring fee of Rs 3,000 to the regulator, by possibly decreasing but not completely scrapping this fee.
Exclusive: Former senior advocate RK Anand, whom the Supreme Court had found guilty of contempt of court for influencing a key witness in the BMW-hit-and-run case, filed an affidavit in the court undertaking to donate Rs 21 lakh to the Bar Council of India (BCI) and take on only pro bono legal work and free legal aid for one year.
The legal education committee of the Bar Council of India (BCI) yesterday published a notification on its website inviting suggestions for improving legal education, one month after a group of 80 Indian law teachers petitioned to the regulator to “consult more meaningfully” with legal academics while framing legal education policies.
The Supreme Court directs former senior advocate and high-profile criminal lawyer RK Anand to donate Rs 20 lakh to the Bar Council of India for developing the library or computer centre of a lower tier college, and also take up only free legal aid cases for one year.
The court presented this course as an alternative to the rulebook sentence of six months of imprisonment for his conviction for contempt of court. It asked him to choose between the two options within a week.
Anand was convicted in 2009 for attempting to influence a key witness in the BMW hit-and-run case. He was then stripped of his senior designation.
He had sought permission from the SC to argue before it and had submitted that since the 2008 Delhi HC ban on his practice he had been providing only free legal aid.
A bench of Justices G S Singhvi, Aftab Alam and C K Prasad said: “If we write an order, no useful purpose will be served by putting this gentleman to this kind of punishment. It would be beneficial if the knowledge, skill and practice of this man is put to better use.” [TOI]
Exclusive: The Bar Council of India (BCI) reconfirmed that the fourth All India Bar Examination (AIBE) will be held on 25 November with no chances of postponement. The council will conduct the exam internally and has hired Noida-based IT implementation and delivery company ITES Horizons for additional help, because none of the tendering third party agencies to conduct the exam could be finalised.
Breaking: The next All India Bar Exam (AIBE) would be held on 25 November 2012, announced the Bar Council of India (BCI) today.
The other day a public relations (PR) agency called me and said that it really wanted an article written for Mint about one of its clients, a fairly well known Delhi lawyer. They said they wanted an interview with or a quote from that lawyer to appear by next week and they would arrange a meeting as soon as possible. As far as pitches for stories go, it was pretty weak.
80 Indian law teachers from 32 Indian and three foreign universities addressed a petition to the Bar Council of India (BCI) yesterday, urging the regulator to “consult more meaningfully” with legal academics while framing policies related to legal education.
Exclusive: The Bar Council of India (BCI) passed a resolution again this year to allow graduates who have not yet passed the All India Bar Exam (AIBE) – which was facing “practical difficulties” but may be held in October or November - to practice in courts for six months, provided they give an undertaking.
The All India Bar Exam (AIBE) is not likely to be held before October, as the Bar Council of India (BCI) had received expressions of interest from four organisations.