Madras high court

The Madras high court has designated 16 advocates to senior counsel, with two or 12.5% being women: G Thilakvathi and N Krishnaveni.

A seven apex court judge bench of Chief Justice of India (CJI) JS Khehar, with justices Dipak Misra, J Chelameswar, Ranjan Gogoi, Madan B Lokur, PC Ghose and Kurian Joseph have today withdrawn all judicial and administrative work from Calcutta high court judge Justice CS Karnan, according to PTI.

There have been numerous pending challenges and at least six high court judgments on the issue of whether the Bar Council of India (BCI) can impose a maximum age limit on law students (of which four judgments quashed the age limit and two upheld the BCI’s power to set one - see table above).

Economic Laws Practice (ELP) Chennai head and partner Karthik Sundaram left the firm on 14 October to go into counsel practice, around 14 days after former managing partner Rohan Shah formally retired from the firm to become a counsel.

“Internet giants YouTube and Google are in a bind. The Madras high court has directed them to disclose details of a user (Marupakkam Seithigal) who posted a video that a private company (Lebara Foundation) termed defamatory,” reported the Times of India.

The Common Law Admission Test (CLAT) core committee decided to bar candidates above the age of 20 years from appearing in the CLAT, 2017 onward, following the Bar Council of India’s (BCI) September 2016 circular to law schools reinstating the age bar for the LLB degree in India.

Prof NR Madhava Menon supported the plan to segregate law courses in India into academic courses and professional courses, and suggested the ways in which to achieve this division and other improvements in the current design of Indian legal education.

The Bar Council of India (BCI) has backtracked on its earlier full-throated support of liberalisation of the legal market in a six-page letter, saying that it had encountered “strong opposition” from state bar councils and was therefore withdrawing its earlier draft rules to allow foreign lawyers.

The Indian Corporate Counsel Association (ICCA) has produced draft of a Foreign Legal Practitioners (Regulation of Practice) Bill 2016, which it will present at today’s meeting with ministries and stakeholders at 17:30 in Delhi.

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.

LLB aspirants’ upper age limit of 20 years for entry to the five year LLB program and 30 years for the three year LLB is back as per the Bar Council of India’s (BCI) latest circular sent to law schools and now uploaded on its website, as first reported by Bar and Bench.

The Bar Council of India (BCI) has stayed its order of 24 July that had suspended, without notice or due process, 126 Tamil Nadu advocates who had allegedly been involved in the strikes against the Madras high court’s controversial new disciplinary rules.

The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) on Tuesday appointed former Supreme Court judge Markandey Katju as the head of a legal panel to guide the board in understanding the recommendations of the Justice RM Lodha Committee which have been approved by the apex court.

Bar Council of India (BCI) chairman Manan Kumar Mishra was interviewed by The Hindu a few days ago about the Bar Council of India (BCI) decision to suspend 126 lawyers from Tamil Nadu for allegedly protesting against controversial disciplinary rules passed by the Madras high court.

"In view of the long history and tradition associated with the existing name of the High Court at Calcutta”, a full court of judges objected to the name change that the government made recently and that would also affect the Bombay and Madras high courts (see letter).

Rajesh, the 26-year-old non-lawyer son of 55-year-old Madras high court advocate, Manimaran, attacked his father yesterday after sneaking into his chambers located on the high court premises, allegedly because he was “unhappy that his father showed no interest in finding a match for his daughter, Anusha, by his first wife”, reported the Times of India, noting:

"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.