BCI transparency

The Bar Council of India (BCI) talks to come up with a new proposal to reform its regulation of the legal profession, have been shrouded in secrecy due to a media gag order since October.

The 10th All India Bar Exam (AIBE) is not even in the pipeline almost nine months after the 9th AIBE, after the Bar Council of India (BCI) notified on the official AIBE website that it has not yet decided the exam date and that candidates should “kindly keep visiting” the AIBE website for further update.

The Bar Council of India (BCI) took almost four months before passing 15 Indians holding foreign law degrees, who took the BCI’s qualifying exam that is a prerequisite to transfer their qualification to India, after having charged the candidates at least $32,000 (around Rs 22 lakhs) to sit the exam.

Senior counsel and Bar Council of India (BCI) chairman Manan Kumar Mishra has sent a letter to prime minister Narendra Modi, copying in the finance, law and commerce ministers, pleading with Modi to not challenge the BCI’s role in regulating the legal profession and the entry of foreign law firms and to bring the BCI back to the negotiating table about the future of the profession.

The Bar Council of India (BCI) has proposed to tighten its control over the legal profession by assuming more than a dozen new functions, statutorily recognising bar associations, formulating new governing rules for law firms and foreign lawyers, and enacting more stringent standards of professional qualification and conduct.

The Supreme Court today told the Bar Council of India (BCI) that state bar councils should hold elections, even if the BCI’s verification drive had not yet been completed, ordering the BCI to frame guidelines to conduct elections and relax its certificate or practice rules if required to allow elections, reported Bar & Bench.

The Bar Council of India (BCI) has asked the Supreme Court, in an affidavit filed in the challenge to conduct of the Common Law Admission Test (CLAT) that was filed by Shamnad Basheer and others, that it be allowed to conduct the CLAT in future.

The posts of chairman, secretary and Bar Council of India (BCI) member at the Punjab and Haryana bar council (PHBC) remain ambiguously occupied after turf wars resulted in a police complaint, an allegedly forged resignation letter, rebukes and intervention by the BCI, an allegedly improper election and allegations of goons attacking the state bar council office.

The Bar Council of India (BCI) delayed a lawyer’s practice certificate by four years, and has now been ordered by the Madras high court to make it available to the lawyer as soon as possible, as first reported by Live Law.

Bar Council of India (BCI) chairman Manan Kumar Mishra has sent an email today to Legally India editor Kian Ganz, which he has requested we publish in full.

The Bar Council of India’s (BCI) proposed delegation of 12 BCI members and “accompanying members” to Washington DC that would have cost more than Rs 48 lakh according to our report on 6 September, is now apparently cancelled.

At least 11 state bar councils and their representatives to the Bar Council of India (BCI) are now continuing in their posts despite their terms having ended, in some cases for nearly two years, including in Delhi, Maharashtra, Bihar, Rajasthan, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka bar councils.

The Bar Council of India (BCI) resolved to fly 12 of its members, by business class, to Washington DC this month to attend the International Bar Association’s (IBA) annual conference, which the BCI had missed for the last five years “due to inadvertent on the part of the [BCI] office”.

Just FYI, more than one month after a CBI court convicted three Bar Council of India (BCI) members to jail and after a PTI report on the judgment, The Hindu on 25 August 2016 is now the only mainstream media outlet (other than http://www.livemint.com/Politics/oS1IH3Hf1bc5dSMmD4fYVP/Bribery-case-exposes-the-rot-in-legal-education.html Mint) to have done a news story:

In May 2010, then-prime minister Manmohan Singh made a few headlines by saying what nearly every lawyer and educator in the country knew to be true: he called Indian legal education a “sea of institutionalised mediocrity”, dotted with a few “islands of excellence”.

"The Supreme Court...has asked the Law Commission to go into all relevant aspects relating to regulation of legal profession in consultation with all concerned...the Commission has undertaken the study and requests the Bar Council of India and all State Bar Councils, Bar Association of the Supreme Court and Advocates on Records Association of Supreme Court, Advocates Associations’ in the High Courts and their respective benches to send their comments within 30 days,” the Law Commission has said in a statement.

"The Central Information Commission has directed the Bar Council of Delhi to proactively make public the cases of professional misconduct, both proved and not proved, against advocates at regular intervals or as and when the decision was taken,”.

If you believe those Supreme Court judges who say that the CBI is a caged parrot, then it might be fair to also assume that the Modi regime does not have much love lost for the Bar Council of India (BCI).

"Legal education needs to be improved and the Bar Council of India needs to reform itself," Law Commission chairman and retired Supreme Court judge Balbir Singh Chauhan told the Economic Times in an exclusive interview.

A Supreme Court bench of justices Anil R Dave, Kurian Joseph and Adarsh Kumar Goel yesterday asked the Law Commission to consider whether the Bar Council of India (BCI) is a suitable regulator of the legal profession within six months.