Bhosale, who was elected on a manifesto of welfare and technology reform, proposed to the bar council on 17 December 2010 to update the state’s bar council website to provide an accessible database with records of all advocates, allow online enrolment applications, filing of complaints, administering of advocate’s benefits and make available a host of other functionality.

A proposal to tender the project will be submitted for approval to the bar council on 13 February, with an invitation to tender proposing to be placed in Marathi and English language newspapers with statewide circulation afterwards.

“We’re trying to keep it very transparent,” said Bhosale, adding that they had already advertised in the Mumbai Mirror and received proposals from 10 to 12 web-designers.

Bhosale said that he wanted to virtualise and digitise the entire state bar council system. “The enrolment system is normally a very tedious process: run to the banks, issue demand drafts, which are due at the bar council - which is still alright for people from Bombay but people from outside need to travel to Bombay to do all of this.”

“Allowing applicants to make payments online should be very interesting – when we think of only Bombay-ites perspective, it is a hassle which will last for a couple of hours, or days at most. Think about the guy sitting in Aurangabad. He has to travel all the way here to Bombay to come and submit it,” he added.

“And the stuff that affects Bombay-ites the most – if they enter the Supreme Court they need a proximity card – we can make the form available to them online.

He also said that under the proposal there could be a username and password for every advocate, perhaps even an email addresses, that would allow advocates to list contact details, photographs and areas of expertise and other information they could “legitimately publish”.

Lawyer insurances schemes, of which a large majority of lawyers were not even aware, could also be worked online. Under rule 40 of the bar council rules, said Bhosale, any lawyer can ask for Rs 15,000 from state bar council if they became ill. Recently, he said, an advocate undergoing lung cancer treatment was granted the maximum amount by the insurance disbursement committee.

Finally, Bhosale also proposed digitising all application records in the bar council offices, some of which date back decades and were decaying and inaccessible.

Funding for the new IT committee would be around Rs 30 lakh, he said, which came out of the bar council library fees, with the library collecting Rs 300 from every library member.

Download the full proposal here.