Bar Council seeks 'stringent' amendments to Advocates Act

To check malpractices by lawyers, the Bar Council of India has sought stringent amendments to the Advocates Act, the government said today.
Noting that legal practice in the country is governed by the 1961 Advocates Act, Law Minister Gowda said in the Lok Sabha that the Bar Council is looking for "stringent amendments" to the Act to prevent malpractices by lawyers.
He said during Question Hour that the Bar Council chairman recently held discussions with the Law Ministry.
"Incidents of malpractices and misbehaviour have come to the knowledge of the chairman of the Bar Council also. The chairman said they are working on it. They want to have some stringent amendments to the Advocates Act to see that such malpractices are brought down," Gowda said.

To another query, the Minister said the Centre has written to state governments to utilise the additional fiscal space available to them for enhancing the investment on the judiciary in the states.
Following the recommendations of the 14th Finance Commission, more funds have been devolved to the state governments, he said, adding that a task force on judicial impact assessment was set up which submitted its report in June 2008.

In January 2015, a committee of experts that examined the issue of implementability of methodologies of judicial impact assessment, submitted its report, the Minister said.
The committee had concluded that judicial impact assessment was neither feasible nor desireable as a method of proper budgetary planning and allocation of funds for the judiciary, Gowda said.

"It suggested an alternative approach for budgetary planning for the judiciary involving the generation of periodic access to justice reports to examine the needs of the judiciary in the light of their constitutional obligation to provide fair, quick and speedy justice," he noted.
According to the Minister, the report has been circulated to the state governments and the high courts.
He also said that core and credible data would be required to carry out judicial impact assessment.
Responding to a question on whether special courts to speed up the cases of women undertrials, Gowda said it is the government's vision to give speedy justice.