The first All India Bar Examination shall be conducted on December 5, 2010, across India. Further, the exam will be held in the month of April and November every year. The examination fee including the cost of preparatory materials is Rs.1, 300 and the reappearance fee is Rs.700. The examination will be held across the country in several languages, such as Hindi, Telugu, Tamil, Kannada and Bengali.

Law Education: What to Expect in the All India Bar Examination

The question paper will be set by respected members of legal academia and will have 100 multiple-choice questions. The questions will be based on several subjects, taken from the syllabus prescribed by the Bar Council of India, for law education programmes, at Indian law schools. The key subjects are, such as property law, constitutional law, criminal procedure, company law and environmental law. Further, the questions will be divided into knowledge based and reasoning questions. The maximum time limit for the examination will be 3 hours 30 minutes.

The All India Bar Examination will be an open-book exam. Students will be allowed to consult any study material. However, electronic gadgets, such as mobile phones, laptops will be not allowed in the examination centre. Further, no percentage, marks or ranking will be declared in the results. The results will only state whether a candidate has qualified the exam or not.

The application forms for the examination will be available at all State Bar Councils, from July 15, 2010. Further, the model test papers will be available on the Bar Council of India’s official website www.barcouncilofindia.org from August 16, 2010.

The verdict can be challenged only in SC. The apex court is already seized of another own appeal against a central information commission (CIC) order that the CJI disclose the contents of a letter by Madras high court judge R Reghupathy complaining that a Union minister tried to influence him to grant bail to an accused.

An SC bench has stayed the CIC order. CJI KG Balakrishnan told reporters on Wednesday, “I have not read the [HC] judgment. I have only read your valuable reports.”

In response to a query whether the SC registry would challenge the HC ruling, the CJI, who briefly interacted with the media at a function to bid farewell to justice Tarun Chatterjee, who retired on Wednesday, said, “It would be decided by a full court.”

He stressed that even the last time (when the CIC passed the order in September 2008) “the full court had decided to go in [for] an appeal” against the September 2, 2009, judgment by HC judge S Ravindra Bhat that upheld the CIC order regarding disclosure of assets by judges.

While ruling that the CJI was not immune to the RTI Act, Delhi high court judges Ajit Prakash Shah, S Muralidhar and Vikramjit Sen had recalled prime minister Manmohan Singh’s statement in parliament.

“The legislation [RTI Act] would ensure that the benefits of growth would flow to all sections of people, eliminate corruption and bring the concerns of the common man to the heart of all the processes

of governance,” PM had said.

To deviate from such standards of honesty and impartiality is to betray the trust reposed in him [CJI], the HC judges said. No excuse or legal relativity can condone such betrayal. From the standpoint of justice, the size of the bribe or scope of corruption cannot be the scale for measuring a judge’s dishonour, they said.

“A single dishonest judge not only dishonours himself and disgraces his office but also jeopardises the integrity of the entire judicial system,” HC said.

“A judicial scandal has always been regarded as far more deplorable than a scandal involving either the executive or a member of the legislature. The slightest hint of irregularity or impropriety in court is a cause for great anxiety and alarm. A legislator or an administrator may be found guilty of corruption without apparently endangering the foundation of the state. But a judge must keep himself absolutely above suspicion to preserve the impartiality and independence of the judiciary and to have the public confidence,” the bench said while allowing SC secretary general to appeal against its verdict before the top court.

the ambit of the RTI Act as the concept of judicial independence is not judge’s personal privilege but responsibility cast on the person.

This is in sharp contrast to Chief Justice of India K G Balakrishnan’s stand that his office was outside the ambit of the transparency law.

However, the high court added that notes, jottings and draft judgments of the CJI’s office would not fall within the umbrella of the transparency law. But “if the judge turns in notes, along with the rest of his files to be maintained as a part of the record, the same may be disclosed,” court said.

The apex court will now have to appeal to itself against the high court order . As soon as the court pronounced its verdict, counsel for the apex court sought the certificate copy of the HC order to file an appeal.

As a natural corollary of the high court verdict, the information pertaining to the assets of the apex court judges, the appointment of judges to the apex court furnished to the office of the CJI will come within the purview of the transparency law. The declaration of the assets by 25 judges of the Supreme Court, including the CJI and one retired judge (Justice B N Agrawal) which has been posted on the web site of the apex court, however , says, such declaration was purely voluntary.

A full bench of the high court headed by Chief Justice A P Shah, Justice Vikramajit Sen and Justice S Muralidhar dismissed the appeal of the apex court which had vehemently opposed bringing CJI’s office within the purview of the act on the ground that it would encroach into its judicial independence .

“Judicial independence is not the personal privilege or prerogative of the individual judge. It is the responsibility imposed on each judge to enable him or her to adjudicate a dispute honestly and impartially on the basis of the law and the evidence,” said the high court in its 88 page judgment.

The high court said, higher the judge is placed in the judicial hierarchy , greater was the standard of accountability and stricter the scrutiny. “If declaration of assets by a subordinate judicial officer is seen as essential to enforce accountability at that level, then the need for such declaration by judges of the constitutional courts is even greater,” it said turning down the plea that Supreme Court judges are not bound to declare their assets.

Giving a wider interpretation to the transparency law, which was hailed as “the most significant event in the life of Indian democracy” , the court said that right to information was part of Fundamental Rights enshrined in Articles 14 (right to equality), 19(1)( a)( freedom of speech) and 21 (right to life) of the Constitution.

“The source of right to information does not emanate from the Right to Information Act. It is a right that emerges from the constitutional guarantees under Article 19(1)( a) as held by the Supreme Court in a catena of decisions . The Right to Information Act is not repository of the right to information ,” the court said.

The court said that the standards of judicial behaviour, both on and off the bench, were normally extremely high. “For a Judge, to deviate from such standards of honesty and impartiality is to betray the trust reposed to him… A judicial scandal has always been regarded as far more deplorable than a scandal involving either the executive or a member of the legislature. The slightest hint of irregularity or impropriety in the court is a cause for great anxiety and alarm,” said the bench in its unanimous judgment.

The high court said that the unanimous resolution of SC judges passed in 1997 on declaration of assets cannot be questioned now. The judges had then decided to put details of their assets in public domain. It also observed that the judges of the higher judiciary were not less accountable than the judicial magistrates legally bound to declare their assets.

The Supreme Court had appealed before the division bench of the high court challenging order passed by a single-judge bench of the high court. Justice S Ravindra Bhatt had said, “CJI is a public authority under the RTI Act and the CJI holds the information pertaining to assets declaration in his capacity as Chief Justice. That office is a public authority under the Act and is covered by its provisions.” Realising the importance of the case, the division bench had referred the case to a full bench.

Advocate Atul Nanda, appearing for the apex court, contended the issue is of national importance and so it has to be decided by the apex court.

The high court order was welcomed by the legal fraternity. The government on its part, however, said, the verdict by which details of judges assets can be sought invoking RTI should not affect the “independence” of judiciary . “We must safeguard the independence of judiciary… We do not consider the verdict as an embarrassment ,” law and justice minister Veerappa Moily said. Moily noted there are still avenues of appeal to the Supreme Court but did not want to comment further.

Advocate Prashant Bhushan, appearing for RTI activist Subash C Agarwal , who is behind the campaign for judges to declare their assets, said, “It is a very historic judgment by the high court which will certainly enhance the stature of judiciary in the country.” Senior advocate and Congress spokesman A M Singhvi welcomed the verdict and hoped that the administrative side of the apex court would not go in appeal on the judicial side.

Former Chief Justice of India J S Verma, who was instrumental in getting the May 7, 1997, resolution passed unanimously pertaining to declaration of assets by the judges publicly opined that the assets of the Supreme Court judges were very much in the public domain.

“We have received a huge response from the lawyers and collected over 3,000 signatures so far to support our campaign,” said Ashok Aggarwal, president of the Delhi unit of lawyers’ association.

The signature campaign began earlier this week in the five district courts and reached the high court on Friday.

After collecting signatures from the lawyers’ fraternity, the group will urge the Chief Justice of the Delhi High Court to allow them to present their cases in Hindi as it is the national language.

“Even in our Constitution, Article 19(A) says that everyone can express himself in any language and denying the use of Hindi in courts is a violation of this fundamental right,” Aggarwal said.

“When lawyers argue in Hindi, judges do not pay attention to them and English has become a status symbol,” he added.

Moreover, Article 348 of the Constitution provides for arguing court cases in English as well as regional languages, Aggarwal pointed out.

A few moths ago, district and sessions judge Mamta Sehgal had issued a circular and made it clear to subordinate judges that they must gauge the court employees, proficiency in Hindi and the use of the language in their work.

In fact, lower courts have an Hindi Implementation Centre, specially created for helping with the use of the language in courts.

Hindi is being used in the high courts of Rajasthan, Allahabad and Madhya Pradesh, but not in the national Capital, according to the lawyers’ union.