State Bar Councils Can't Charge More Than Rs 750 As Enrollment Fees, Says Supreme Court

State bar councils cannot charge enrollment fees beyond the legal stipulation in the Advocates Act of 1961, the Supreme Court has held.

In essence, the court has held that the the total enrollment fee for advocates belonging to general category should not be more than Rs 750, and for advocates belonging to the SC and ST categories, it cannot exceed Rs 125.

The top court has held that state bar councils, being delegated authorities, do not have the power to prescribe enrollment fee contrary to the statutory stipulation.

The basis of the fee charged by the state bar councils has to be traceable back to the provisions of the statute. There is no express provision in the statute that empowers these bar councils to charge anything more than the enrollment fee and stamp duty, if any.

The court has held that the decision of the state bar councils to charge miscellaneous fee is contrary to the legislative prescription of the Advocates Act.

The court has directed the state bar councils to ensure that the provision pertaining to the quantum of enrollment fee that is to be charged is not defeated under the garb of different nomenclatures.

Lastly, the court said that this ruling will have a prospective application, meaning that the state bar councils won't have to refund the excess fee that they had been charging from candidates up until now.

This case pertains to the issue of enrollment fees charged by various state bar councils across the country.

There is a huge difference in the amounts charged by different state bar councils. For instance, the enrollment fees in Odisha is Rs 42,100, in Gujarat it is Rs 25,000, in Uttarakhand it's Rs 23,650, in Jharkhand it is Rs 21,460 and in Kerala it is Rs 20,050.

One of the primary contentions was that charging such exorbitant fees effectively denies the facility of enrollment to young aspiring lawyers who do not have the resources.

Owing to this variance in the amounts charged by the state bar councils, the top court had observed during the hearing that charging more than the amount stipulated as per the Advocates Act of 1961 for enrollment to the bar is not permitted.