Kochi: The Kerala High Court has directed the Bar Council of Kerala (BCK) to collect an enrolment fee of only Rs 750 from law graduates who wish to enroll as advocates until the Bar Council of India (BCI) lays down a uniform fee structure, as directed by the Supreme Court, which applies to all State Bar Councils.
The order was passed by a division bench of Chief Justice S V N Bhatti and Justice Basant Balaji in an appeal filed by the Bar Council of Kerala again
Incidentally in February, a single-judge of the Court had passed an interim order directing the BCK to provisionally accept enrollment applications by the law graduates upon payment of Rs 750.
But then the benefit of that order was limited only to the petitioners in the case who had challenged the BCK's decision to collect Rs 15,900 as enrollment fees.
The BCK filed an appeal against the interim order before a division bench.
Following this, the bench of Chief Justice SV Bhatti and Justice Basant Balaji on June 12, passed an order extending the benefit of the single-judge's order to all law graduates wishing to enroll in the state.
“...to a pointed query from the Court, learned senior counsel appearing for the Bar Council of Kerala has stated that so far as the petitioners are concerned by accepting Rs750/- enrollment fee, the enrolment of respective petitioners has been completed. In the fitness of things in the exercise of our jurisdiction, by according to the petitioners herein, the representative status to agitate the grievance for and on behalf of similarly situated graduates, who would be interested in getting enrolled on the rolls of the Bar Council of Kerala, we extend the same benefit to such of the aspirants as well. Such a course would avoid a series of individual cases by the aspirants" the Court stated.
The single judge's order had come on a plea moved by ten law graduates of the 2019-22 batch from the Government Law College, Ernakulam challenging the fee of Rs 15,900 that the BCK was charging, reported Bar and Bench.
The petitioners argued that such fees amounted to an “insurmountable financial hurdle” for them and many other students.
The plea alleged that the BCK was acting beyond the scope of its rule-making power by framing rules to levy an amount higher than ₹750 prescribed by the Advocates Act, reported Bar and Bench.