The High Court of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh has notified that advocates who graduated from the 2009-10 academic year onwards must pass the All India Bar Examination, and that those already qualified must file their Certificates of Practice with the Registry.
The Kerala High Court has directed the Bar Council of Kerala to update, within eight weeks, its list of advocates who have not cleared the All India Bar Examination, extending it to enrolments from 2021 onwards, and to publish the list and continue reviewing defaults. The direction follows a PIL flagging an RTI reply that disclosed over 1,150 advocates in Kerala who had not passed the AIBE. District Judges are to be intimated and act accordingly.
The Supreme Court has said it will examine whether the Bar Council of India, as the statutory regulator of the legal profession, has the power to control and regulate law colleges and universities. Hearing pleas concerning the BCI-PEARL FIRST Trust and law institutions it has set up, the Court questioned how the BCI could be an expert body on legal education, observing that a regulator cannot itself run the institutions it is meant to regulate.
A member of the Bar Council of India has told the Supreme Court, in an affidavit, that important decisions have repeatedly been taken in the BCI’s name without deliberation among its members, including the August 13 action to bar the enrolment of NALSAR’s 2026 batch, which he says was never placed before the General Council. He also alleges the Attorney General and Solicitor General, ex-officio members, were not given notices or agendas of BCI meetings. The allegations are untested.
Today, On 6th December, Supreme Court rescheduled the Special Intensive Revision hearing for tomorrow. Senior Advocate Dwivedi highlighted the Election Commission’s powers and citizen-centric constitutional provisions, while CJI noted, “If we are able to take up at 12 then we will continue till lunch.”
