SC to hear plea on BCI's verification drive for lawyers

The Supreme Court today agreed to hear tomorrow a plea of a lawyers' body seeking exemption from the ongoing verification drive of the Bar Council of India (BCI) to check professional credentials of practising lawyers.
The Supreme Court Advocate-on-Record Association (SCAORA) has moved the apex court seeking urgent hearing of its plea that its members should not be subjected to the verification drive of BCI as their records are already with the court.
The counsel for SCAORA told the vacation bench of Justices P C Ghose and Amitava Roy that BCI had a practice not to subject designated senior advocates and Advocates-on- Records (AoRs) to verification.

AoRs are those lawyers who are qualified to appear and sign petitions and documents to be filed before the apex court, which also conducts examinations for advocates who want to become AoRs.
Recently, the apex bar body BCI has taken the intitiative to conduct the verification drive as there have been allegations that some practicing lawyers do not possess valid law degrees.
Advocate Gopal Singh, appearing for the SCAORA, said that AORs should not be forced to submit their certificates before the BCI like other lawyers as they were registered only after cracking the exams conducted by the Supreme Court itself.

He told the bench that designated senior advocates and AORs were earlier exempted from the verification process but the BCI had last year amended rules and brought AORs in the bracket of common lawyers.

To this, the bench asked the counsel for BCI to show the provisions under which it can amend the rules.
"You tell us the provisions under which you can amend and frame the rules. Show us the source of power under which you are allowed to amend the rules," the bench said while posting the matter for hearing tomorrow.
The BCI had last year amended the rules for verification process to filter out fake advocates among over 15 lakh practising laywers in the country.

BCI Certificate and Place of Practice (Verification) Rules 2015 makes it mandatory for all lawyers to re-register in a new format where they have to compulsorily submit all their certificates starting from class X board results.