After more than two months the Bar Council of Maharashtra & Goa has agreed on its committee make-ups including the positions of chairman and Bar Council of India (BCI) delegate, as youngest member Karan Bhosale is proposing to radically increase computerisation through a new IT committee, roll-out wireless internet to the Bombay High Court and hike the welfare fund pay-outs.

Election results were announced in May after months of counting, and now following long negotiations between members Nashik advocate Jayant Jaibhave was appointed by bar council resolution on 18 July as the first chairman.

It is understood that the holder of the chairman position has been agreed to rotate every six months.

Satish Deshmukh from Yavatmal was elected to be the BCI delegate from Maharashtra & Goa, while Nitin Chaudhary from Dhule has been elected into the vice-chairmanship role.

A majority of the new bar council are first-timers on the body, which resulted in new members holding many of the influential roles on the bar council.

The Maharashtra & Goa Bar Council's youngest-ever member Karan Bhosale meanwhile was appointed into roles on the enrolment committee of three members and the "Maharashtra advocates welfare fund" committee.

Karan Bhosale told Legally India that he had major plans for overhauling the role and importance of the Bar Council, particularly in the areas of the welfare fund and IT infrastructure.

Well, fair

"We are shooting across letters to all the bar councils around the country by the end of this week to invite from them how they have structured their advocates welfare funds," Bhosale said two weeks ago.

"We are in the process of revamping [our welfare fund]. After a span of 30 years every member [currently] gets 30,000 rupees - we want to revamp it to [Rs] 3 lakh or considering to [Rs] 5 lakh."

At the moment the welfare fund, which acts as a quasi-retirement payment for advocates, is funded through a stamp duty of Rs 2 that is attached to every vakalat filed with the court by members of the welfare fund.

Bhosale said that the bar council was considering increasing this amount and making it compulsory for all Maharashtra & Goa advocates to be members of and to contribute to the welfare fund, as well as receive its benefits. The precise financial requirements were currently being investigated, explained Bhosale.

Technology

He added that he had also started an IT committee of the state bar council that would modernise the technology infrastructure available to lawyers.

"The basic spirit of the IT committee is to act like a window between the bar council and members," Bhosale said.

"The IT committee also would endeavour to provide WiFi [wireless internet access] at the Bombay High Court both on the appellate and original side and also plug points for usage of laptops," he said. "We will also enter into contracts with different [hardware companies] to try and subsidise the laptops, to make bulk purchase and give them at subsidised rate to lawyers."

In addition, he proposed that the entire enrolment process would become computerised where enrolling advocates could complete a majority of the procedural work and pay enrolment fees online, in order to reduce the difficulty experienced by lawyers from rural regions who have to travel to Mumbai to enrol with the bar council.

Additionally the IT committee would look to create an electronic database of all lawyers in Maharashtra & Goa, along with their specialisations and contact details, he said, as well as launch a project to form a digital archive of old and disintegrating legal books kept in the High Court and other libraries. "They are a real treasure of the legal world for the lawyers – we are going to digitalise all those books and put them upon the internet."

The plans would be funded from existing funds but should ultimately be self-sustaining through moderate fees charged to advocates for using the services, said Bhosale.

Commitee memberships Maharashtra & Goa bar council July 2010

Member	Origin	Committee appointment
Aniruddha Krishnarao Choube	Nagpur	Rules Committee, Advocates Aid fund
Milind Shivshankar Thobde	Solapur
Vasant Digamberrao Salunke	Aurangabad	Rules Committee
Harshad Vasantrao Nimbalkar	Pune	Executive Committee, Rules Committee
Anil Chandrabali Singh	Mumbai	Executive Committee, Employees Provident Fund and Staff Welfare Fund
Uday Prakash Warunjikar	Mumbai	Bills Committee
Sureshchandra Ramrao Bhosale	Mumbai	Bills Committee
Avinash Bhaskarrao Avhad	Pune	Enrolment Committee
Pramod Pandurang Patil	Thane	Finance and Accounts Committee, Employees Provident Fund and Staff Welfare Fund
Ashish Panjabrao Deshmukh	Yavatmal	BCI delegate, Finance and Accounts Committee, Advocates Aid fund
Shivajirao Bhausaheb Chavan	Kolhapur
Karan Dilip Bhosale	Mumbai	Enrolment Committee, Welfare Fund
Vitthal Bhaurao Kondedeshmukh	Mumbai	Executive Committee, Advocates Aid fund
Babusingh Kartarsingh Gandhi	Akola	Rules Committee, Bills Committee
Balwant Harishchandra Jadhav	Latur
Vipinkumar Leeladhar Bendale	Jalgaon	Finance and Accounts Committee, Bills Committee
Satish Abarao Deshmukh	Hingoli
Ahmedkhan Usmankhan Pathan	Pune
Avinash Janardan Bhide	Nashik	Executive Committee
Jayant Dattatray Jaibhave	Nashik	First chairman, Rules Committee, Bills Committee
Motisingh Ghanshyamdas Mohta	Akola	Executive Committee
Ashok Vitthal Patil	Ahmednagar	Employees Provident Fund and Staff Welfare Fund
Anil Mahadeorao Gowardipe	Nagpur	Enrolment Committee
Asif Shaukat Qureshi	Nagpur	Finance and Accounts Committee, Welfare Fund
Nitin Laxman Chaudhari	Dhule	Vice-chairman, Finance and Accounts Committee