Bar Council of India: Composition, Functions, and Why It Is Neither Constitutional Nor a Court

The Bar Council of India (BCI) regulates the legal profession and legal education across the country, and it is a statutory, not a constitutional, body: it owes its entire existence to the Advocates Act, 1961, with no article of the Constitution behind it. Getting that classification right, and not confusing the BCI with a State Bar Council, is most of what this chapter tests.

Composition (Section 4)

The Bar Council of India consists of the Attorney-General of India and the Solicitor-General of India, both ex officio, plus one member elected by each State Bar Council from among its own members. The Council elects its own Chairman and Vice-Chairman. A member's term runs differently depending on how they hold their State Bar Council seat: two years from election (or until they cease to be a State Bar Council member, whichever comes first) for most elected members, or, for a member who holds their State Bar Council seat ex officio, the length of that ex officio term. Every member continues in office until a successor is elected, so there is no seat left structurally vacant between terms.

Bar Council to be a body corporate (Section 5)

Every Bar Council, the BCI included, is declared a body corporate with perpetual succession and a common seal, empowered to acquire and hold property and to sue and be sued in its own name. This is the standard mark of a statutory institution meant to outlast any of its individual members, the same structural device used for many of the constitutional and statutory bodies this book covers elsewhere.

Functions (Section 7): regulation and legal education, not adjudication

Section 7 lists the BCI's functions, and the exam's real interest is in what kind of body this list describes: a regulator and standard-setter, not a court and not a legislature. The functions include laying down standards of professional conduct and etiquette for advocates; laying down the procedure for disciplinary committees, both its own and each State Bar Council's; safeguarding the rights, privileges and interests of advocates; promoting law reform; exercising general supervision and control over State Bar Councils; promoting legal education and setting its standards in consultation with universities; recognising which university law degrees qualify a graduate for enrolment as an advocate; organising legal aid to the poor; recognising foreign law qualifications on a reciprocal basis for enrolment purposes; and managing the Council's own funds and elections. Enrolling individual advocates and maintaining the roll, by contrast, is a State Bar Council function (Section 6), not the BCI's: the BCI supervises and sets standards, the State Bar Councils do the actual enrolling.

Disciplinary jurisdiction: who hears what

Both tiers, State Bar Councils and the BCI, run disciplinary committees, but their jurisdiction is not identical. A State Bar Council's disciplinary committee ordinarily hears misconduct complaints against advocates on its own roll. The Bar Council of India's disciplinary committee functions as an appellate body over a State Bar Council's disciplinary orders, and also has original jurisdiction in specified circumstances, such as when a case is withdrawn for inquiry from a State Bar Council. The structural point worth holding onto: this is a two-tier, quasi-judicial disciplinary system built entirely by statute, exercised by the profession's own elected and ex officio representatives, not a court of law in the ordinary sense, even though its orders (such as suspension or removal from the roll) are appealable further to the Supreme Court under the Act.

Quick revision points

• The Advocates Act, 1961 is the BCI's entire legal basis: statutory, not constitutional.
• Composition (Section 4): Attorney-General and Solicitor-General of India, both ex officio, plus one elected member per State Bar Council. Chairman and Vice-Chairman elected by the Council itself.
• Body corporate (Section 5): perpetual succession, common seal, can sue and be sued, same as a State Bar Council.
• Functions (Section 7): standard-setting, supervision of State Bar Councils, legal education standards, legal aid, and disciplinary procedure, not enrolling individual advocates, which is a State Bar Council's own job under Section 6.
• Disciplinary structure is two-tier: State Bar Councils hear first-instance misconduct complaints, the BCI's disciplinary committee hears appeals (and specified original matters), with further appeal to the Supreme Court.

The trap this chapter sets most often is treating "Bar Council of India" and "State Bar Council" as interchangeable; keep Section 4's composition and Section 6/7's functional split straight and the practice questions on this chapter stop being able to blur the two.