Bar Council of India (BCI)
The proposed Legal Services Board has elicited mixed reactions from legal practitioners on CNBC-TV18’s The Firm last week, with Rajiv Luthra noting that state bar councils do need tighter regulation in some manner, Lalit Bhasin and Karan Bhosale arguing that the existing regulators can already do the job and MP Bharucha predicting that it could facilitate the entry of foreign law firms.
Latest update: All 2010 law graduates may be able to practise law subject to giving an undertaking they would clear the all-India bar exam within two years, according to a bar council source.
In an unexpected turn the all India bar examination (AIBE) transfer petition may now be scheduled for hearing by a division bench on or after 29 November according to one authoritative source, with completion of the summoning process making way for adjudication on merits.
An email from the BCI has confirmed that the bar exam date has been “pushed” and that the body would make a formal statement on 25 November.
State bar councils are planning to hold regional bar exams for each state, as the holding of the all India bar exam has turned into a political circus between the Bar Council of India (BCI), its chairman and the state bar councils. Meanwhile, the BCI will meet in Chennai this weekend (20 November), probably without BCI chairman Gopal Subramanium.
Exclusive: Bar Council of India (BCI) members passed a resolution in the absence of chairman Gopal Subramanium today to postpone the bar exam by three months until 6th March 2011, as the BCI is also understood to have discussed future involvement by Rainmaker.
The Aurangabad student respondents' counsel in the bar exam Supreme Court transfer petition decided against a second mentioning of an interim stay application after having been declined once before by the Chief’s court, as the Chamber judge is likely to take up the matter for non-prosecution after three months in line with standard procedural practices in the apex court.
Exclusive: The Supreme Court may have set the stage for the next round of proceedings in the All India Bar Exam challenges after completing the summoning process but certainty has continued to elude thousands of law graduates, as only two out of six anti-exam petitioners are still in active pursuit of the case while the other four have become absentee litigants for most intents and purposes.
The law ministry has proposed a new statute that partly supplant the functions of the Bar Council of India (BCI) with a new super-regulator called the Legal Services Board that will oversee the regulation of legal practice, client service, legal education and make it obligatory for lawyers to provide free legal aid.
The Bar Council of India (BCI) has extended the All India Bar Exam registration date, which elapsed last Sunday, by another 15 days to 15 November as the exam is still scheduled to be held on 5 December.
Hastened by the impending Diwali court holidays and the 31 October deadline to apply for the bar exam, the petitions against the exam in the Supreme Court momentarily picked up speed this week.
An application for stay of the Bar Exam was unsuccessful in the Supreme Court today as the registrar referred the Bar Council of India’s (BCI) failure to serve notices on respondents to a chamber judge, although no substantive hearing will now be possible before the Diwali court vacations end on 8 November.
Today’s hearing in the All India Bar Examination (AIBE) matter has been postponed by one more day following an inadvertent administrative delay in sending the case files from the Supreme Court Registry to the registrar’s court.
The Supreme Court has granted three more days to the Bar Council of India (BCI) for completing the summoning process in the All India Bar Examination (AIBE) transfer petition case today in its repeated attempt to get the regulator to clear procedural hurdles for a merit-based adjudication.
The Supreme Court writ petitions in the bar exam has been postponed again, this time to 25 October, following no notices having been served on respondents.
The Punjab and Haryana High Court has reaffirmed and upheld the Supreme Court’s jurisdiction in the adjudication of the impending writ petitions against the All India Bar Examination (AIBE) citing the apex court’s earlier decision to combine and hear the matter as transfer petition titled Bar Council of India vs Babubhai Vaghela & Ors.
Exclusive: The Bar Council of India (BCI) has abandoned its high-rent offices at short notice after less than four months in the premises, which has caused logistical difficulties and shut down the Airtel-operated bar exam telephone helplines for nearly a week now.
Responding to a Right to Information (RTI) Act request by a Nalsar graduate, the Bar Council of India (BCI) did not disclose the fees that would be paid to legal industry service provider Rainmaker in connection with conducting the all India bar exam while admitting that it did not actively look for any other suitable providers.
The Law Ministry has issued two statements on behalf of the Bar Council of India (BCI) that the regulatory body “has decided not to permit foreign lawyers into India” but was subject to “rational scrutiny”, despite the BCI not having discussed the issue at the BCI’s three previous meets.