Enrolment Fee for Lawyers: Bar Council of India files petition to transfer cases from High Courts to Supreme Court

The Bar Council of India (BCI) has moved the Supreme Court praying that various petitions pending before the High Courts of Kerala, Madras and Bombay concerning enrolment fees for lawyers, be transferred to the top court [Bar Council of India v Akshai Sivan]..Chief Justice of India (CJI) DY Chandrachud, Justices PS Narasimha and Manoj Misra issued notice to the Bar Councils of Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Goa. "You may issue rules etc. but collecting enrolment fees.. don't know. We will have to see," the CJI remarked. .In its petition, the BCI has submitted that the pleas before various High Courts deal with substantially the same questions of law relating to the constitutional validity of fees chargeable at the time of advocates' enrolment. The BCI also emphasised that transferring the petitions would prevent the wastage of judicial time and that the matter could be authoritatively decided by the top court. The plea has been filed through M/s Ram Sankar & Co..The transfer petition was filed in the wake of a Kerala High Court order, passed last June, directing the Bar Council of Kerala (BCK) to collect a reduced enrolment fee of ₹750 only from law graduates who wished to enrol as advocates, until the BCI lays down a uniform fee structure applicable to all State Bar Councils. A single-judge of the High Court had earlier passed an interim order in February, directing the BCK to provisionally accept enrolment applications by the law graduates before it upon the payment of ₹750.The benefit of the February order was limited only to the petitioners in the case who had challenged the BCK's decision to collect ₹15,900 as enrolment fees.The BCK filed an appeal against the interim order before a division bench.When the appeal came up before Chief Justice SV Bhatti and Justice Basant Balaji on June 12, the High Court division bench extended the benefit of the single judge's order to all law graduates wishing to enrol in the State..Similarly, a petition challenging notifications issued by the Bar Council of Maharashtra and Goa (BCMG) enhancing enrolment fees to ₹15,000, which was made effective from January 2020, is pending before the Bombay High Court. .Recently, the BCI had also informed the Punjab and Haryana High Court that it would take necessary steps to deal with the issue of exorbitant enrolment fees charged by State Bar Councils..In fact, earlier this year, the top court had sought responses from State Bar Councils on a plea challenging the non-uniform and exorbitant enrolment fees collected by different State Bar Councils..A bench of CJI DY Chandrachud and Justice PS Narasimha and JB Pardiwala had observed that the issue was important while granting the petitioner liberty to serve a copy of the petition on the BCI..[Read Petition]