At least 11 state bar councils and their representatives to the Bar Council of India (BCI) are now continuing in their posts despite their terms having ended, in some cases for nearly two years, including in Delhi, Maharashtra, Bihar, Rajasthan, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka bar councils.

The Bar Council of India (BCI) resolved to fly 12 of its members, by business class, to Washington DC this month to attend the International Bar Association’s (IBA) annual conference, which the BCI had missed for the last five years “due to inadvertent on the part of the [BCI] office”.

The Bar Council of India rejected Maharashtra’s request for time to meet its Legal Education Rules on infrastructure of government and aided law colleges in the state, with the result that those colleges will not be able to take admissions this year, reported the Times of India.

The Bar Council of India (BCI) has stayed its order of 24 July that had suspended, without notice or due process, 126 Tamil Nadu advocates who had allegedly been involved in the strikes against the Madras high court’s controversial new disciplinary rules.

Jindal Global Law School (JGLS) Sonepat and the Indiana University Center on the Global Legal Profession is hosting a very interesting panel discussion today, which I intend to live blog here.

Bar Council of India (BCI) chairman Manan Kumar Mishra was interviewed by The Hindu a few days ago about the Bar Council of India (BCI) decision to suspend 126 lawyers from Tamil Nadu for allegedly protesting against controversial disciplinary rules passed by the Madras high court.

In May 2010, then-prime minister Manmohan Singh made a few headlines by saying what nearly every lawyer and educator in the country knew to be true: he called Indian legal education a “sea of institutionalised mediocrity”, dotted with a few “islands of excellence”.

“Legal education needs to be improved and the Bar Council of India needs to reform itself,” Law Commission chairman and retired Supreme Court judge Balbir Singh Chauhan told the Economic Times in an exclusive interview.

On 1 June, Bar Council of India (BCI) chairman Manan Kumar Mishra sent Legally India reporter Prachi Shrivastava an email making a number of allegations against her, and Legally India editor Kian Ganz, after Prachi had asked Mishra for a comment on why the BCI had forced all law schools to buy products from the All India Reporter (AIR).

The Bar Council of India (BCI) has still not complied with its statutory duty under the Right to Information (RTI) Act 2005, more than six weeks after the Central Information Commission (CIC) threatened to impose maximum penalty on BCI chairman Manan Kumar Mishra, if the BCI continues in its non-compliance of the law.

The main All India Bar Exam (AIBE) website, http://www.allindiabarexamination.com/ is offline for “maintenance”, around two weeks after Bar Council of India (BCI) chairman Manan Kumar Mishra said the bar exam contract with unqualified contractor ITES Horizon Pvt Ltd had expired.

The Bar Council of India (BCI) has been a victim of the “sinister game” of a “mischief doer” who forged the BCI’s ‘LIFT’ restrictions notice that went viral on Saturday, BCI chairman Manan Kumar Mishra told Legally India via email.

In November 2013 the Bar Council of India (BCI) amended its Legal Education Rules 2008 and, for years following that (as reported by us last week), has been sending repeated letters to law schools, telling them it was obligatory to buy lakhs worth of products of the All India Reporter (AIR).

In a two-day conference by the Bar Council of India (BCI) in Dehradun over the weekend, attended by Supreme Court justice Dipak Misra and law minister DV Sadananda Gowda, Professor Madhava Menon held a talk on the “need of continuing legal education to the lawyers”.

“)The Bar Council of India (BCI) chairman Manan Kumar Mishra will deduct one day’s salary from BCI staff “below the rank of assistant secretary” and “sweepers or other outsourced employees” who are caught using lifts at the BCI’s Rouse Avenue office in Delhi.

The Bar Council of India’s (BCI) chairman Manan Kumar Mishra has responded to our request for comment on the news that the BCI had again amended bylaws to prescribe law schools to buy the All India Reporter’s (AIR) products, despite protests from vice chancellors and having agreed two years ago that such a requirement to buy from a single vendor was unfair.

There are now “about 20 lakh” lawyers in India, according to Bar Council of India chairman Manan Kumar Mishra. The BCI’s data on lawyers’ verification has revealed that Delhi has the maximum number of “fake” lawyers.

“)The Bar Council of India (BCI) has again tried to sell All India Reporter (AIR) case reports to law schools, even expanding the obligatory catalogue of electronic AIR publications law college libraries must stock, despite having agreed two years ago that such a requirement to buy from a single vendor was unfair.

The results to the All India Bar Exam (AIBE) 9 will be out on 16 May, announced the Bar Council of India (BCI) on the official bar exam website:

The Bar Council of India (BCI) has not satisfactorily complied with the Right to Information Act 2005 (RTI Act) provision which requires that it publish all its affairs on its website, held the Central Information Commission (CIC). The CIC said it is inclined to impose maximum penalty on the BCI if it doesn’t comply in a definite amount of time.