Jahanvi Agarwal
The Bar Council of India (BCI) has filed a petition before the Supreme Court of India stating that there are many cases relating to lawyer enrolment fees. The said cases are pending before the High Courts of Kerala, Madras, and Bombay and are requested to be referred to the apex court. A notice was issued to the Bar Councils of Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and Goa by the Chief Justice of India, DY Chandrachud, and Justices PS Narasimha and Manoj Misra.
The CJI stated that:
“You may issue rules etc. but collecting enrolment fees..don’t know. We will have to see.”
The BCI claims in its petition that the arguments before several High Courts pertain to essentially the same legal issues, i.e., regarding the constitutionality of fees imposed at the time of an advocate’s enrolment.
Additionally, the BCI pointed out that by moving the petitions to the Apex Court, the precious time of the court can be saved and the subject matter can be directly dealt with by the Apex Court. M/s Ram Sankar & Co. filed the argument on behalf of the defendant.
The transfer petition was filed in response to a Kerala High Court order that instructed the Bar Council of Kerala (BCK) to collect a reduced enrolment fee of 750 only from law graduates who wished to enroll as advocates until the BCI establishes a uniform fee structure that would apply to all State Bar Councils. This order was issued in June.
In February this year, a High Court single-judge had previously issued an interim order instructing the BCK to provisionally accept enrollment requests from law graduates who appeared before it in exchange for payment of 750 rupees.
In the instant case, the petitioners who had contested BCK’s decision to charge Rs.15,900 as enrollment fees were the only ones to profit from the February order. The interim order was the subject of an appeal by the BCK before a division bench.
On June 12, when the appeal came up before Chief Justice SV Bhatti and Justice Basant Balaji, the High Court division bench extended the benefit of the single judge’s order to all law graduates wishing to enroll in the State.
Similar to this, the Bombay High Court is now hearing a lawsuit that challenged the notification issued by the Bar Council of Maharashtra and Goa (BCMG) which imposed enrolment fees of Rs.15,000 with effect from January 2020.
Not only this but the BCI recently notified the Punjab and Haryana High Court that they will take the appropriate action to solve the problem of exorbitant enrolment fees imposed by State Bar Councils.
The top court had earlier this year requested responses from the State Bar Councils in response to a plea that challenged the non-uniform and exorbitant enrollment fees imposed by the State Bar Councils.
While allowing the petitioner and a copy of the petition to be served on BCI, the CJI DY Chandrachud, Justice PS Narasimha, and JB Pardiwala bench noted that the issue dealt with in the said matter is crucial.
Case Name: Bar Council of India v. Akshai Sivan
Diary Number: 001310-001312
Bench: CJI DY Chandrachud, Justice PS Narasimha, and JB Pardiwala