New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Wednesday directed the bar Council of India and State Bar Councils to hold elections by the end of December 31, 2017 after the process of verification of degrees of lawyers is completed. A Bench of Justices R.K. Agrawal and A.m. Sapre passed this order on a batch of petitions filed by All India Council of Jurists by its National President Dr. Antony Selvaraj and others, through advocate Sriram Parakkat, seeking a direction to the BCI and Tamil Nadu Bar council to hold elections. The petitioners urged the court for ordering immediate elections of the State Bar Council as the term has expired long back.
The Bar Council of India, however, pressed for verification of the candidates to eliminate fake lawyers in order to bring improvement in the Bar and to get deserving practicing advocates for the respective Bar Councils. It said the verification process is yet to becompleted. The Bar Council of India and the State Bar Councils have undertaken the massive exercise of verifying the law degrees
and had collected applications from lawyers for verification of their law degrees as contemplated under the Certificate and Place of Practice (Verification) Rules, 2015 framed by the BCI mandating the State bar Councils to verify the original certificates of all the practicing lawyers.
The Bench in its order granted 15 days time to lawyers to cure the defective applications and submit their completed application forms for necessary verification of their degrees, if they have not submitted the same earlier, from the date of publication of advertisement in two leading newspapers, one in English language and the other in regional language having wide circulation in the respective State/Union Territories.
The University Authorities shall ensure the verification of degrees awarded by them, without any charge, within 1 (month) on its presentation.
The respective State Bar Councils shall publish a Final Electoral Roll by including the names and particulars of such advocates whose degrees attached with the application forms have been verified by the concerned University authorities.
The names of all such advocates who have not removed the defects in the application forms already submitted within the specified time and also such persons whose degrees on verification have been found false or fake by the University authorities shall not be included in the Electoral Rolls.
Bar Council of India and State Bar Councils should take all the steps for the purpose of elections in respect of all the Bar Councils where the term of the existing members have completed. The process of elections should be completed by December 31, 2017.
