By Bidya Mohanty

The Bar Council of India (BCI) has embroiled itself in a controversy of its own making.

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On the evening of August 13, it issued a directive on the letterhead of its Chairman, to the Vice Chancellor (V-C) of NALSAR University of Law, Hyderabad, and to all State Bar Councils in India, mandating an en masse debarment, preventing the 2026 graduating batch from being enrolled as advocates. The supposed “transgression” the directive sought to “discipline”? The airing of reservations by a section of students to their V-C about the invitation to the Chief Justice of India as the chief guest for the 2026 Convocation. The directive also sought an inquiry report from NALSAR to identify names of the students and of those who may have aided them, including members of the Student Bar Council, faculty and alumni.

The public outcry was swift, as was the BCI’s reversal of its own directive following the backlash. Shortly after midnight, on August 14, a post on X from the verified account of Manan Kumar Mishra, the BCI Chairman, conveyed that the BCI had closed the proceedings after having satisfied itself that the 2026 batch of the University “had no role in any disturbance or movement”. The lack of any disturbance or movement had never been in doubt to begin with – letters written by some students to their V-C can hardly be labelled so. However, the BCI’s directives have raised graver concerns.

The BCI is a statutory body constituted under the Advocates Act, 1961. As a creature of the statute, its duties and powers are strictly confined to the four corners of the Act. The directive in question does not specify any provision of the Act or rules made under it, which would empower the BCI to interfere in the internal dialogue between students of a law university and its administration or to prevent law graduates from enrolling as advocates. The Advocates Act, 1961 lays down very specific and exhaustive grounds for disqualification from enrolment, involving conviction for certain offences and dismissal from government employment on charges of moral turpitude. Evidently, none of those grounds could have been invoked vis-à-vis the students.

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In its haste to impose “appropriate” standards of professional conduct on students, the BCI appears to have lost sight of its limited sphere of functioning. It seems to have ignored a crucial judgment of the Supreme Court, rendered in 1995 by the then Chief Justice of India, A M Ahmadi. The Court held that while the BCI’s rule-making power extends to the right of practise of advocates, encompassing those who had already enrolled themselves as advocates, such power could not be expansively construed to regulate anyone at the pre-enrolment stage. The power to admit or remove names from the rolls of advocates was declared to be within the exclusive domain of the State Bar Councils, on a comprehensive analysis of the provisions of the Advocates Act, 1961. In line with its findings, the Court had struck down a rule framed by the BCI barring individuals aged 45 and above from enrolling as advocates. Without authority being sourced to the parent statute, combined with an express denial of such a rule-making power, a letter by the BCI directing debarment of students from enrolment cannot masquerade as an order with any legal backing.

Stripped to its essence, this BCI directive was a thinly veiled attempt to browbeat and threaten students at the cusp of their legal careers, all for expressing their sentiments internally in a respectful and peaceable manner. A robust legal education compels discerning minds to question the status quo, to comprehend contextual nuances of interdisciplinary justice and to speak truth to power – rather than churning out “compliant” lawyers intended to fall in line. There are few such spheres, other than a university campus, which provide sheltered spaces where contrarian thoughts and independent ideas may be expressed, nurtured and tempered. This is why it is all the more disquieting to see the BCI target the university and its faculty members, levelling serious allegations of “groupism”, “dirty politics” and having played a role “in misleading, instigating and misguiding” students without a shred of evidence.

The BCI, in seeking to safeguard the dignity of judicial office and legal institutions, has not been very cautious about its own. An oral remark made by former Chief Justice of India, Justice Sanjiv Khanna, presiding over court proceedings – “Courts are not as fragile as flowers to wither and wilt” – should serve as a steady reminder for the BCI, and us all.

The writer is an advocate at the Supreme Court and alumnus of NALSAR, Hyderabad