The Supreme Court expressed concern and displeasure over the extraordinary delay in the verification process of lawyers across the country, including Gujarat. A bench of Chief Justice Sanjiv Khanna, Justices Sanjay Kumar, and KV Vishwanathan has sought a detailed reply from the Bar Council of India (BCI) within eight weeks along with the latest status report through an order.

The Supreme Court termed the delay in the verification process as serious and said that the verification process of lawyers across the country should be completed expeditiously. What is shocking is that out of the approximately 1.25 lakh lawyers in Gujarat, almost half of the verification process has yet to be completed.

Anil Kella, a member of the Verification Committee of the Gujarat Bar Council and former chairman of the Bar Council, said that lawyers from 1990 to 2010 have to submit their third LLB marksheet, degree certificate, and other documents along with the verification form to the Bar Council, while lawyers from 2010 to date, i.e. up to 2023, have to submit the declaration form of whether they have passed the All India Bar Exam along with the relevant documents.

When the documents are sent by the lawyers, the Verification Committee sends them to the universities for verification and verification. There are approximately 1.25 lakh lawyers in the state, out of which, the verification form and declaration form of about half of the lawyers are yet to be submitted to the Bar Council.

Now, it will undoubtedly take a long time for these lawyers to fill out their forms and when the Bar Council will send the degree certificates of such lawyers to those universities for verification.

As part of excluding bogus lawyers from the profession across the country including Gujarat, the Supreme Court issued directions in 2015 regarding the verification process of lawyers across the country. Since then the verification process of lawyers across the country was started through the State Bar Councils.

However, even after nine years, the verification process has not been completed. The Supreme Court took a very serious note and clearly stated that a deadline should be set to complete the verification process.

Kella said that as per the directions of the Supreme Court, the Gujarat Bar Council had sent the degree certificates of 28,493 more lawyers to eight different universities including Gujarat University for verification, out of which only 14,316 verification reports have been sent back to the council by the universities. 

The Verification Committee of the Gujarat Bar Council will issue a formal written request to the eight universities of the state, including Gujarat University, to immediately send the verification reports of the remaining lawyers.

BCI had revealed before the Supreme Court that it is estimated that about 20% of lawyers are practising in the courts of the country without a valid degree. According to sources, in the verification drive, about 1,000 lawyers were found to be bogus in Delhi alone and the same is the case with Punjab. Recently, the Bar Council of Delhi found 117 lawyers with bogus degrees, out of which 95 had fake degrees from Bundelkhand University.