The Delhi High Court today closed the hearing of the plea seeking action against former Delhi Law Minister Jitender Singh Tomar for enrolling as an advocate on the basis of an allegedly "false and bogus" graduation degree.
Justice Indermeet Kaur disposed of the plea on the ground that the Delhi police was already investigating the matter and the Disciplinary Committee of the lawyers body is probing into the issue of his degree.
"In view of the action taken by the Delhi police and other authorities concerned, there is no point of keeping the writ petition pending," the court said.
Recently BCI has ordered verification of the degrees of the lawyers on the direction of Supreme Court. The move holds more significance after Tomar's degrees were found to be fake.
The court allowed Tomar's plea to transfer his enquiry related to his degree to Bar Council of India (BCI), after it was told that the tenure of the Bar Council of Delhi (BCD) ended, due to which there is delay in ongoing enquiry ordered by the lawyers body.
The court's order came on the AAP's lawmaker application seeking closer of the petition, by advocate Santosh Kumar Sharma, on the ground that he was already facing prosecution in a criminal case on the same issue.
The case has been brewing prior to Tomar's election as an MLA, as a petition was filed before High court on February 4 last year, alleging that he had given "false information" in his affidavit while filing his nomination.
In his plea, Sharma has claimed that Tomar had submitted a "fake and bogus" undergraduate degree in science from Avadh University to get enrolled in the Bishwanath Singh Institute of Legal Studies College (BSILS), Munger (Bihar) where he had purportedly studied LLB.
He was enrolled as a lawyer by the Bar Council of Delhi (BCD) on the basis of a law degree from this college.
Taking note of the plea, the high court had asked BCD to
complete the inquiry as expeditiously as possible after giving due opportunity to all concerned.
50-year-old Tomar, MLA from Trinagar, was arrested on June 9, 2015, following an investigation into a complaint by BCD that he had obtained a fake law degree from Bihar college. Tomar is currently on bail.
An FIR was registered against him on June 8, 2015, at Hauz Khas police station and he was booked for alleged offences of cheating, forgery, using forged documents, forgery with intent to cheat and criminal conspiracy.
Interestingly, the BSILS College in its affidavit before Delhi High court had said that Tomar had been a bonafide LLB student though he had completed his LLB in four years and not three years.
In contrast, the Tilka Manjhi University, which is the affiliating university for the Law college, has said that the roll number given by Tomar does not match with their records.
BCI in its Certification of Practice (CoP) 2015 had asked all State Bar Councils to implement the verification process for the lawyers at the earliest. Under the new law, every advocate needs to submit all his original degrees with the Bar Council he is registered with.
