Delhi HC issues plea challenging government on advocate welfare scheme on domicile bias claim

NEW DELHI: The Delhi High Court on Monday issued a notice on a plea challenging the Delhi government’s Chief Minister Advocate’s Welfare Scheme on the ground that it only recognises those advocates as beneficiaries who are in the voters’ list.

Justice Prathiba M Singh issued the notice to the government, the Bar Council of India and the Bar Council of Delhi on a plea filed by advocate Govind Swaroop Chaturvedi that stated that while the welfare scheme is envisaged to benefit all advocates enrolled with the Bar Council of Delhi, the notification dated on March 17, 2020, only permits those advocates to avail the aforesaid benefits, who are in the voters’ list of Delhi.

The plea also highlighted the fact that the online form for submission has one of the mandatory columns as Delhi voter ID card number, which is discriminatory without any intelligible differentia to the extent of absurdity and is violative of Articles 14 and 21 of the Constitution.

The petitioner has challenged the legality of the notification on the ground that it doesn’t give a rational or reasonable argument for excluding the non-voters from the welfare scheme.

“Clearly, the said eligibility condition to exclude the non-voters is illegal and ultra-vires as well as inequitable as all the advocates registered with Respondent No.2/Bar Council of Delhi are playing the same role for rendering their services for dispensation of justice in the courts at Delhi and are contributing in the same manner to the society,” the petition states.

It demanded the benefits of the scheme to be extended to all the advocates registered with the Bar Council of Delhi regardless of the fact that they are registered voters of Delhi or not, and also, the date of registration should be extended which has lapsed on April 14.