SC seeks Centre, Bar Council replies on plea for national lawyer registry
The Supreme Court on Thursday sought responses from the Centre, the Bar Council of India, the University Grants Commission and others on a plea seeking
The Supreme Court on Thursday sought responses from the Centre, the Bar Council of India, the University Grants Commission and others on a plea seeking a national digital registry for the legal profession, including a unique national advocate identifier for every enrolled lawyer to help curb fake practitioners. A bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justice V Mohana said the proposal appeared innovative and could be implemented with the help of technology. Read Full Story The petition, filed by the Bar Association of India, also asked the Bar Council of India to frame a social media and digital conduct code under Section 49 of the Advocates Act, 1961. The top court issued notice to the respondents and listed the matter for hearing in July. Appearing for the BAI, advocates Vipin Nair and Prashant Kumar referred to the issue of a digital conduct code for lawyers. During the hearing, the bench said it had come across some "nasty comments" on digital platforms.
"We will show you some of these samples. What kind of nasty comments and statements are being made, and we are sure they have nothing to do with the law," the said. The bench said advocates were responsible and that the first thing they learn is professional ethics. "They (advocates) will not indulge in all this. Those who are doing it and are defaming the profession, they may not be really professionals," it said. Stressing the need to support younger lawyers, the bench said the best course was to strengthen young members of the Bar. It noted that in some high courts and district courts, young lawyers had formed associations and were engaged in constructive academic activities and discussions on legal issues. "Our entire hope lies on the young members of the Bar and the future generation of the profession," the observed. The bench also said law universities would have to be impleaded as parties, after which the BAI's counsel said the UGC had already been made a respondent.
In its plea, the BAI said India has around 1.8 million enrolled advocates but no single publicly verifiable, real-time national record to show who is genuinely enrolled, holds verified qualifications and is in good standing. The plea said the system of enrolment and maintenance of rolls was fragmented across 23 State Bar Councils without uniform standards, interoperability or any mechanism for a litigant, court or authority to instantly verify an advocate's credentials. It said this structural opacity had allowed fraudulent enrolments to continue undetected on a large scale. The petition sought a permanent technology-driven Digital Registry for the Legal Profession of India, with a unique national advocate identifier for every enrolled lawyer, real-time enrolment status, verified legal qualifications, disciplinary record and a publicly accessible QR-verifiable profile for each advocate. It also sought directions to the UGC to create a digital law degree verification portal linked to BCI-approved law schools, to the Centre and the BCI to jointly establish the registry, and to the Ministry of Law and Justice to create a corpus for it as a national rule of law infrastructure project.
The BriefWire