'Cannot Have A Lawyer As Scribe For AOR Exam': CJI DY Chandrachud On Visually Challenged Candidate's Plea

The Supreme Court on Tuesday remarked that a visually impaired person appearing for the examination for Advocate-on-Record (AOR) could not be provided with a scribe who was an LLB degree holder or a lawyer. The remark was made in a matter mentioned on behalf of a visually impaired lawyer who was unable to get a clearing for his scribe (who was an LLB degree holder) to assist him in the AOR examination. The matter was mentioned before a bench comprising CJI DY Chandrachud and Justice PS Narasimha.

At the very outset, CJI Chandrachud expressed his disapproval of allowing a scribe who was an LLB-degree holder as a scribe for an AOR examination. He said–

"The scribe can't be one who is an LLB degree holder. It has to be someone else. We cannot have a lawyer as a scribe in AOR exam."

However, the bench offered to provide a different scribe to the petitioner so that he could successfully take the AOR examination without any hurdles. CJI Chandrachud, after listening to the mentioning stated that he would pass administrative orders on allowing scribe.

The petitioner in the case was a practising advocate with a 100% visual impairment. After clearing UPSC in 2018, the petitioner was appointed as the Assistant Government Advocate (AGA) in the Central Agency Section of the Supreme Court of India. The said post was identified by the Government of India as suitable for visually challenged person as per RPWD Act. However, the Central Agency did not permit the petitioner to join service on account of his visual impairment. He was then re-assigned to the post of the Assistant Legal Advisor at Shastri Bhawan. Despite being an officer in the Indian Legal Services for over 2 years, the petitioner learnt that he was being denied regularisation as the Department of Legal Affairs, Ministry of Law and Justice had continued to treat the petitioner as an AGA and was impeding his regularisation on the ground that an AGA is required to pass the AOR Examination at the Supreme Court of India within two years of being appointed.

Through the petition, the petitioner challenged the imposition of condition on disabled officers of the Assistant Government Advocate service cadre to qualify the AOR Examination within a period of two years. 

Further, the petition submitted that the structure of Paper II in the AOR Examination acted as a disadvantage to visually impaired candidates. As per the petition, the paper in question tests the drafting abilities of the candidate and consisted of questions pertaining to descriptive case statements that need to be converted into Supreme Court pleadings from a comprehensive knowledge of the format of the pleading as well as the statutes involved.  The petition submits that–

"There is no clarity on the qualifications of scribe lesser than LLB means any persons who has completed Higher Secondary or Under graduate. It is respectfully submitted that writing the examination with a scribe without any familiarity with legal practice increases the risk of errors in the answers and the lags brought about by the scribe's unfamiliarity with the subject and the terms employed."

As per the petition, such errors were likely to erode the quality and content of the disabled candidate's paper and cost them critical marks.

The petition also submitted that Paper IV tested the examinee on leading cases spanning 64 voluminous judgments that contained an in-depth discussion and analysis of important statutory provisions. Thus, the petition states that–

"An examinee is required to read the question which is of a descriptive nature, identify the judgment on which the same is based, refer to the Head Notes in the compilation given by the Registry and frame his / her answer. This is an intensely time consuming process. It is for this reason that Paper IV has been made 'open book'. An examinee such as the petitioner who appears for the exam through a scribe is entirely at the mercy of the scribe to reach that part of the judgment / head notes, which he needs, to successfully respond to the question. In such cases, a scribe unfamiliar with the judgments is bound to encounter hardship in navigating through such voluminous precedents and identifying the relevant portion of the head note required by the examinee to set out his answer."

Therefore, the petition submits that such a process results in precious time to be lost and even an hour-long relaxation of time granted to disabled candidates was unhelpful. It adds–

"No proposition has ever been made to change this paper from the 'open book' format since it is almost impossible that a candidate could ever write the examination without access to the judgments. Resultantly, Paper IV which is open book for normal examinees becomes a closed book examination for a visually impaired examinee. It is respectfully submitted that the structure of the AOR Examination does not offer a visually impaired examinee an equal playing field."

The petition highlighted that in practice, the role of an AGA in the Central Agency Section was supported by experienced stenographers, typists, junior advocates, empanelled advocates for drafting. Thus, the petition stated that a finding that every AGA appointee must pass the AOR Exam in the form and structure that it exists today, required assessment regarding whether the AOR Examination was accessible for persons with disability.