Advocate sticker cannot be a licence to violate law: Madras High Court

Chennai: The Madras high court has said advocates stickers can hardly be a license to break law,  including traffic rules or not wearing helmets. This is because all are equal before law and so the police is entitled to proceed as per law. A Division Bench comprising Chief Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul and Justice T. S. Sivagnanam made the above observation while passing interim orders on a PIL from advocate V. Ramesh, which sought a direction to Bar Council of Tamil Nadu to frame appropriate guidelines before enrolling any law graduates from other states.

The petitioner alleged that many persons by producing fake certificates obtained from universities in other states, were enrolling themselves as lawyers.The court said as far as the prayer for removal of stickers from vehicles not of advocates was concerned,  the chairman of the State Bar Council had stated  that he will place before the court the mechanism for the same to ensure that the sticker was not affixed to vehicles which did not belong to advocates.

“The tendency to use the sticker of advocates arises from a perception as if it is the preventive cure for breaking law, which certainly cannot be the objective. Advocates are officers of the court and the primary purpose of the stickers is for access of the vehicle to the designated parking”, the Bench pointed out.

After counsel for the Bar Council of India and the State Bar Council sought four weeks to file affidavits, the bench said, “We have put the counsels to notice that in case of persons enrolled after the examination system (license to practice) has come into place in 2010 and there being a requirement of clearing the exams within a period of three years, anyone who has not cleared the exams within that period, license of that person has to be necessarily revoked and immediate steps must be taken in this behalf.”The Bench posted the matter for August 21 for further hearing.