NEW DELHI: Think again before you hire a lawyer. He may not be possessing the requisite qualification to argue your case in court. The Bar Council of India (BCI) has revealed that as many as 30 per cent, or six lakh, of the 20 lakh lawyers registered in the country hold fake degrees. It is verifying the degrees of lawyers following the Supreme Court orders. The process will continue till June 30. According to BCI, Delhi may have maximum number of fake lawyers.
Delhi is the most legally concentrated state in India, with every 300th person in the city being a lawyer.
As per the BCI’s data, there are 55,000 registered lawyers in Delhi at present. Of these, more than 20,000 are those who have valid licence but they aren’t actively practising. Last year, BCI had made it mandatory for every lawyer to renew their licences every five years.
BCI in its Certification of Practice (CoP) 2015 had asked all State Bar Councils to implement the verification process for the lawyers at the earliest. Under the new law, every advocate needs to submit all his original degrees with the Bar Council he is registered with.
The BCI’s move holds more significance after former Delhi Law Minister Jitendra Singh Tomar’s degrees were found to be fake.
BCI chairman Manan K Mishra told The Sunday Standard that lawyers in Delhi are against the verification process because a large number of them have fake certificates.
“Nearly 30 per cent of the lawyers and 20 per cent of those who sport lawyer’s robes do not have proper degrees in the country are fake, possessing ‘fraudulent’ law degrees or non-practising persons. This practice has to stop. Such lawyers are the root cause for strikes and boycotts that is being witnessed in various courts for petty and frivolous issues,” Mishra said.
After the verification process is over, BCI is contemplating to establish a mechanism of giving Unique Identification Numbers to all the lawyers so that as soon as any lawyer files his Vakaltnama before the court, the system can identify his details and verify his credentials.
“This is a right step. This would help concerned authorities in weeding out lawyers who have nothing do with the legal system, courts of the country. I believe there at least 20,000 such lawyers in Delhi itself,” said Rajesh Kumar Mishra, former secretary, Bar Council of Delhi.
“There are about 20 lakh lawyers in the country. The council, since its establishment in 1961, had never carried out any such verification process. We never had any data concerning lawyers. We will have it now. The process will help to eliminate fake lawyers,” said the BCI chief.
Implementation of BCI Certificate and Place of Practice (Verification) Rules 2015 means it is mandatory for all lawyers to re-register in a new format where they have to submit all their certificates starting Class X board results.