The Delhi High Court today rapped the Bar Council of Delhi (BCD) for its failure to have a procedure in place for online mode of enrollment of law graduates during the prevailing COVID-19 pandemic and asked the council, "When everything is going digital during the COVID-19 pandemic, how can we accept the argument that it might be difficult for BCD to go online?"A single judge bench of...
The Delhi High Court today rapped the Bar Council of Delhi (BCD) for its failure to have a procedure in place for online mode of enrollment of law graduates during the prevailing COVID-19 pandemic and asked the council, "When everything is going digital during the COVID-19 pandemic, how can we accept the argument that it might be difficult for BCD to go online?"
A single judge bench of Justice Navin Chawla posed the question to the Bar Council of Delhi on a petition filed by 4 law graduates from Bihar - Abhishek Anand, Gaurav Kumar, Priya Ranjan and Anurag Yadav - seeking an online process for enrollment in the Council due to their inability to be present physically in Delhi owing to the pandemic.
The matter was adjourned, giving the Council another week's time to reply to the matter.
Last week, the bench had issued notice on the students' plea after they highlighted that in the event of their failure to enrol themselves with the Council they would not be eligible to sit for the All India Bar Examination, for which the last date of application is Dec 19. The court had asked the BCD to reply on the question of the process in place, if any, for online enrollment.
The plea by the graduates highlighted that the Bar Councils of several other states - like Kerala, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh - had
started online enrollment of law graduates in August-September this year.
They also said that in a similar plea the BCD had told the High Court in September that certain steps were being taken to address the issue of online or electronic mode of enrollment. However, till date no steps have been taken by BCD. They added that representations sent by them have also not elicited any response from the lawyers' body.