Prayagraj: Acting on directives of the Allahabad High Court, the Bar Council of Uttar Pradesh has asked all bar associations across the state to submit within 15 days a list of advocates against whom FIRs have been registered in serious criminal cases, who have been chargesheeted, or whose criminal trials are pending.In a notification issued on July 23, Bar Council secretary Amrendra Kumar Shukla warned that failure to furnish the information within the stipulated period would result in cancellation of the association’s affiliation with the council.The notification added that any default would be treated as disobedience of the high court’s order and reported to the court.The directive follows the high court’s June 3 order in Mohd Kafeel vs State of Uttar Pradesh, in which it asked authorities to take appropriate action against advocates facing serious criminal charges.
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The court had also expressed dissatisfaction with a report submitted by the Bar Council of Uttar Pradesh, which identified only 105 advocates with fake degrees among nearly five lakh registered lawyers in the state.“This list of merely 105 advocates, compiled by the Bar Council of Uttar Pradesh as part of the verification exercise directed by the Supreme Court and the high-power committee constituted for that purpose, appears to be no more than a token and superficial exercise,” the court observed.The court noted that the figure was wholly disproportionate to the scale of the problem, given Uttar Pradesh’s vast advocate population.It further observed that widespread forgery, the involvement of advocates enrolled between 1991 and 2023, and the misuse of the names of reputed institutions such as Allahabad University over a prolonged period indicated that the actual number of advocates practising on the basis of forged qualifications could be much higher.The high court directed the registrar (compliance) to place a consolidated compliance report before it on Aug 20, the next date of hearing.
