Senior Advocate AR L Sundaresan has been elected as the new President of the Madras Bar Association (MBA) following elections held on Monday.
The full list of office bearers elected to the body runs as follows:
President
AR L Sundaresan
Secretary
M Baskar
Treasurer
R Karthikeyan
Librarian
S Siva Shanmugam
Executive Committee Members
T Surekha
Anbu Karasu
A Nilaphar
Kaithamalai Kumaran
T Karunakaran
The election results come in the backdrop of controversy regarding MBA membership pending before the Bar Council of Tamil Nadu and Puducherry. Three lawyers had contended that the membership selection process to the MBA is being carried out arbitrarily after 275 applicants were denied membership.
Out of 300 applicants, including senior counsel, 25 had been approved membership. In an interim order passed last week, the State Bar Council had directed that the decision regarding their membership would be left open to MBA General Body after the assumption of office by the newly elected body.
The Madras Bar Association is the oldest among lawyer’s association bodies of the Madras High Court, the others being the Madras High Court Advocates’ Association, the Woman Lawyers Association and the Law Association.
The MBA was constituted in 1865, three years after the Madras High Court was established by royal charter. At the time, it was christened simply as the ‘Bar Association’ and membership was open only to British Barristers. After a decade or two, Indian Barristers were permitted to become members. In 1898, the Association was renamed as the ‘Madras Bar Association’. It was only in 1951 membership was made open to advocates who obtained law degrees from Indian Universities.
Read the notification concerning MBA Election Results 2019 below: