S Prabhakaran

The Bar Council of India (BCI) will visit Jammu almost 10 days after bar associations in the state announced lawyers strikes and impeded the filing of a charge sheet in the case of the alleged rape and murder of a minor girl, the brutality of which caused nationwide shock.

Bar Council of India (BCI) member S Prabhakaran and 11 other Madras advocates are now senior advocates in the Madras high court, reported the Times of India.

NL Rajah, R Vaigai, Sathish Parasaran, A Sirajudeen, Isaac Mohanlal, R Singaravelan, TP Manoharan, Veera Kathiravan, Karthik, Anand and Xavier Arulraj are the other new senior advocates part of this round of designations in the high court.

This is the first batch of senior designations affected under the new senior designation norms that exist since 2013. Before 2013, advocates could simply nominate themselves for their own designation and if two-thirds of the full court of judges voted in favour of such nomination, the designation was complete. Under the new norms, only advocates who are invited to nominated themselves for the designation, are eligible to apply.

Additionally, only those advocates can be invited who have at least Rs 7 lakh as income tax returns for three previous financial years and publication of a minimum of 15 judgments in reputed law journals.

After this round, the Bar Council of Tamil Nadu and Puducherry will have 122 senior advocates on its rolls, according to a statement by the state bar council’s chairman D Selvam to TOI

The Bar Council of India (BCI) told the Supreme Court today that it unanimously agreed that advocates’ alleged assault of journalists and senior advocates outside of Patiala House district court last week was “really shameful” and a “very unfortunate... incident” that should not be tolerated, according to its affidavit published by Live Law, but that those attacks should be dealt with separately from the alleged attacks on the ‘unlawful assembly’ of JNU students who “need[ed] to be opposed strongly” and “strongly condemned”.

The Bar Council of India (BCI) unanimously voted in S Prabhakaran as its new chairman yesterday, for the next four months. The BCI also unanimously voted in Prabhakaran’s predecessor Manan Kumar Mishra to preside at the BCI as its third-time chairman from May 2016 onwards.