Bar Council of India chairman Manan Kumar Mishra on Saturday revealed that 30 per cent of all the lawyers in India are fake holding fraudulent law degrees.
Disclosing this at a mega lawyers meet organised by BCI in Chennai, Mishra said the BCI, which is statutorily empowered to discipline errant lawyers and take action against them, was in the process of weeding them out.
In the BCI’s estimation, about 20 per cent were practising in courts without valid law degrees, he said, adding that a law minister of Delhi himself had a fake law degree.
Fake lawyers and non-practising law graduates are degrading <g data-gr-id="74">quality</g> of the profession, Mishra said. “We will filter bad and non-practising lawyers,” he said.
The two-time BCI chairman also expressed concern over strikes and boycotts by lawyers, happening even for petty issues. Not just Tamil Nadu, even states like Bihar and Uttar Pradesh were victims of boycotts and strikes by lawyers, he said.
He said the BCI had proposed a three-tier disputes resolution mechanism which envisages committees at district, high court and Supreme Court levels. Any dispute will first go to the committee which will be headed by a district judge, then to the senior-most judge of a particular high court and at last to the Apex Court, he said.
Mishra also sought the support of the judiciary in this endeavour saying without its help the objective could not be achieved. He also disclosed that management and control of legal services authorities should be handed over to lawyers for better performance. He informed the gathering that the matter was discussed with Union law minister D V Sadananda Gowda, who has agreed to consider the proposal. Gowda was present at the meeting.
He said the minister had asked the BCI to frame rules. At present, legal services authorities were not functioning well and wasted public resources, he said.
Rebuttal for the suggestion came a moment later, when Supreme Court judge Justice V Gopala Gowda, who also spoke at the function, said the legal aid scheme was working well and judges and lawyers were arriving for its success.
Earlier, co-chairman of the BCI and president of Tamil Nadu Advocates Association S Prabakaran said no age bar should be allowed for acquiring legal degrees. The Lawyers Meet-2015 was organised by the BCI to discuss three issues — public litigation policy, access to justice and environmental laws.