BCI (CoP) Rules: Supreme Court seeks guidelines for state bar council elections

The Supreme Court today asked the Bar Council of India (BCI) to frame guidelines for holding elections to the various state bar councils. The direction was issued by a Bench of Justices Pinaki Chandra Ghose and Amitava Roy in a batch of petitions challenging the BCI (Certificate of Practice) Rules..Senior Advocate Gourab Banerji, who appeared for the petitioner, submitted that the elections to state bar councils should not be held up due to the non-completion of verification of lawyers..“Verification of lawyers could take a long time. If each and every certificate has to be verified, then it will take three to four years. Elections should be held in the meantime. Rule 23 should be relaxed.”.Chairman Manan Kumar Mishra, who appeared for BCI, denied that verification would take so long, and also explained the reasons which necessitate verification..“Inexperienced persons are Chairmen of various state bar councils. In Uttar Pradesh, only one designated Senior Advocate is member of the State Bar Council. In Punjab and Haryana, Chairman had only four years of practice.”.He also pointed out instances of persons with criminal backgrounds etc becoming members of state bar councils..The Supreme Court, however, decided that elections to state bar councils should be held even if the verification was not completed, and asked the BCI to frame guidelines for conducting elections. It has also asked the BCI to consider relaxing appropriate provisions under the BCI (CoP) Rules so that elections can be held..The matter will now be taken up on October 19..Describing it as an attempt to weed out non practicing lawyers from the advocate roll, the BCI had notified the Bar Council of India Certificate and Place of Practice (Verification) Rules 2015 (Rules) earlier this year. Various petitions were filed in different High Courts challenging the same. The BCI then moved the Supreme Court seeking transfer of those petitions, after which the apex court stayed the proceedings in the High Courts.