Delhi High Court seeks government stand in plea against direction to Delhi Bar Council to contribute to CM Advocates’ Welfare Scheme

The Delhi High Court sought responses from the Central and Delhi governments in a petition challenging a direction calling for the Delhi Bar Council to contribute to the Chief Minister Advocates’ Welfare Scheme once expenses exceed the ₹50 crore budget [Bar Council of Delhi v. Government of NCT of Delhi]..A Bench of Chief Justice Satish Chandra Sharma and Justice Subramonium Prasad agreed to hear the plea and issued notice to the two governments..Advocate KC Mittal and Ajay Kumar Agarwal appeared for the appellants..The appeal challenged specific directions passed in a 2021 order of the High Court which said that the year-to-year deficit which is beyond the government's budgeted amount shall be funded by the Bar Council. To this end, the Court in that order had said that the Bar Council may utilise its own funds, including funds collected under the Advocates Welfare Act, or pool voluntary contributions from willing lawyers or collect some part of the amount from beneficiaries. .As per the plea filed by Advocate Ajay Kumar Agarwal, government schemes are applicable to everyone and cannot be discriminatory.Therefore, it is the sole responsibility of the government to establish adequate infrastructure, including finances for the proper and fair implementation of the scheme. “All the advocates on the roll of Bar Council of Delhi would be legally entitled to be benefit of the schemes and the same cannot be restricted or denied on the ground of any arbitrary and irrational budgetary allocation.”.The order under challenge had ruled that the welfare scheme must be extended to all lawyers registered with the Bar Council of Delhi, irrespective of whether their place of residence is in Delhi or the surrounding National Capital Region (NCR). While the appellants did not take issue with this finding, they pointed out that no direction was passed with respect to the opening of the portal for the registration of such advocates. .The appeal further highlights that the respondents closed the portal for registration abruptly in April 2020 during the lockdown, and that requests for further extension were rejected arbitrarily, unjustifiably and illogically. The appellants also drew a distinction between this petition from another appeal challenging the judgment on the ground that the other appeal only dealt with issues of advocates practicing in Delhi, but residing in NCR. Thus, the 2021 judgment was prayed to be set aside..Delhi High Court issues notice on govt's appeal against extending CM Advocates' Welfare Scheme to Delhi lawyers residing in NCR.Apart from this, the appellants also sought a direction to the government to open the portal for registration with a specific direction to include all those who are enrolled with Bar Council irrespective of their place of residence and for those who couldn't register earlier due to various constraints..Notice was issued to the Central and Delhi governments as well as Life Insurance Corporation of India in a similar petition filed by an advocate in November 2021 by then Chief Justice DN Patel and Justice Jyoti Singh..In November 2020, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal had announced that a 13-member committee of lawyers would be set up to make recommendations on the utilization of the ₹50 crore earmarked for the Advocates Welfare Fund by the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government.In December 2019, the Advocates Committee set up under the convenorship of then-Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA) President Rakesh Khanna proposed rolling out Group (Term) Insurance, Group Medi-Claim, e-library and creche for advocates in Delhi towards the utilization of the scheme.The scheme was approved by the Delhi government in 2021..Later that year, a plea was filed to extend this scheme to lawyers residing in NCR, but practicing in Delhi. The Court accepted this plea and directed that all lawyers registered with BCD residing in Delhi and the surrounding NCR shall be entitled to be covered under the scheme.Justice Prathiba Singh had observed that there may be lawyers who practice primarily in Delhi, but have their permanent residence elsewhere like Faridabad, Gurgaon, Noida, Ghaziabad, etc. It was further noted that all may not be able to reside in the metropolitan area of Delhi due to a huge number of reasons like availability or affordability of accommodation etc.She, therefore, ruled that the insistence on a voter ID showing residence in Delhi to avail the welfare scheme is discriminatory, arbitrary and has no link to the object of the scheme.