To vote, provisional members must clear All India Bar exam

Vadodara: Provisional members of Baroda Bar Association (BBA) who have not cleared All India Bar examination will not be able to vote in the upcoming polls of the lawyers’ body.
The Bar Council of Gujarat (BCG) finally issued a notification in connection with it recently. The eligibility of provisional members, who had not cleared the exam, to vote in the polls of the association was questioned last year by two city-based advocates.

Following the notification, the election commission of BBA released a circular asking the provisional members to furnish their passing certificate by Monday evening if they want to be eligible to vote in the elections that are scheduled to be held on December 21.

“All those provisional members who have not cleared All India Bar examination are not eligible to vote. We have already released a final voters list of permanent members and later a supplementary list of eligible provisional members will be released,” said advocate Shrikrishna Acharya, member of BBA election commission.

In the previous election held in December 2017, the issue of eligibility of provision members who had not cleared All India Bar examination had raked up a controversy leading to delay of counting of votes by three months.

Days before the election last year, advocates Hitesh Gupta and Sohil Godia had filed writ petition in the Gujarat high court after the election officials of BBA had failed to review the voters’ list which also included provisional members who had not cleared All India Bar examination. The duo had filed the writ petition on the grounds of notification of Bar Council of India which makes provisional members ineligible for voting without clearing the All India Bar examination.