The Supreme Court today reserved its order on a batch of petitions challenging the Bar Council of India’s Certificate and Place of Practice (Verification) Rules, 2015 making it mandatory for all lawyers to undergo verification drive to check the professional credentials of practicing advocates. The two Judge bench of Justices RK Agarwal and AM Sapre said it will pronounce the Judgment on Friday.
BCI had amended the Rules and launched the verification drive to weed out law practitioners with fake law degrees.
The bench today said "at the moment we are concerned about the issue of holding elections of bar councils which got delayed due to verification drive."
Appearing for BCI, Senior Advocate Rajiv Dutta submitted that the Central Verification Committee headed by retired Supreme Court Judge Anil R Dave has held several meetings to examine the progress report of all state bar councils in the verification drive. He sought the Bench to allow the committee to continue. However, petitioner argued for holding of elections as early as possible.
Filing an affidavit, BCI counsel said the committee examined the status report received from state bar councils and there are total 15, 34,531 enrolled Advocates and 6,44,768 advocates have submitted forms and state bar councils have sent 5, 23, 706 degrees for verification. Universities have already verified and sent reports with regards to 1,65,339 degrees.
The bench was informed that on November 12 meeting of the committee, representatives of only 7 state bar councils were present and submitted the status report.
According to the BCI affidavit, the verification committee has expressed dissatisfaction and observed that the progress of state bar councils as “not very good but satisfactory.”
In August, the Apex Court had directed BCI to set up a committee to speed up the verification drive.
A three member verification committee headed by Justice Anil R Dave was constituted. Justice L Narsimha Reddy, former Chief Justice of Patna High Court and Justice Mridula Mishra, former judge of Patna High Court are the other members of the Committee.
Counsel for the impleaders from Kerala argued that 17,059 out of 20,763 LL.B degree certificates were verified by various Universities and no case of fake certificates were reported so far. It is also submitted that the balance verification may take yeas and Bar Council of Kerala may be directed to proceed with the election.