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1.7m Indian lawyers, 4,000 pending complaints: NYT interviews BCI chairman Mishra

Mishra on regulation
Mishra on regulation
The New York TimesIndia Ink blog has interviewed the Bar Council of India (BCI) chairman Manan Kumar Mishra who said that around 4,000 complaints were pending with the BCI, which is the state bar councils’ appellate body for disciplinary cases, while around 1.7 million lawyers were enrolled.

He also added that it was against professional ethics for a lawyer to refuse to act for a client, such as the accused in the Delhi rape case, and that a large problem plaguing the profession was the discrepancy in salaries between urban and rural areas.

“We are trying to regulate abnormal fees charged by some lawyers. It is impossible for the clients to afford some of them. It is a private profession so we can’t really stop it, but we can only make a request,” he said, adding that because of poor economic conditions, lawyers were not getting the remuneration they deserve outside of Delhi and Mumbai.

We have about 17 lakh (1.7 million) lawyers in the country today. There are approximately 1,000 law schools, and almost 45,000 to 50,000 lawyers are added every year…

The most common malpractice is the delaying of cases by some lawyers. Cheating is another offense we look at, but these cases are rare and dealt with in a severe manner. We revoke the license completely in very serious cases.

Approximately 4,000 such cases are pending with the B.C.I. People first they approach the state bar councils; B.C.I. is the appellate authority. I am not sure of the exact number, but the state bar councils receive about 50 complaints every year.

There were only 3,500 cases pending with the B.C.I. in 2010. But with the number of lawyers increasing, the number of complaints has also increased.

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