SHIMLA, HIMACHAL PRADESH — The Himachal Pradesh High Court (HC) made an important decision by not letting a man named Inderpal Singh become a lawyer when it was found that he had gotten into a three-year LLB program before finishing his undergraduate degree. This verdict, reached by a division bench on July 24, 2025 (the order is now public), strongly supports the strict eligibility requirements set by India’s legal education authority.
Inderpal Singh had appealed a previous decision from a single bench of the HC, which had similarly turned down his request to become an advocate. The division bench, however, sided with the Bar Council of Himachal Pradesh after looking into the matter. They stressed how important it is to follow established rules.
Breaking the Advocates Act and the Rules of Legal Education
The court’s ruling is based on the Advocates Act and the Rules of Legal Education of 2008, which provide that you can only get into the three-year LLB course if you have already earned a bachelor’s degree.
The court’s judgment said, “….thus, the prescribed standards cannot be eased out or diluted, just to allow the appellant-writ petitioner to seek ratification or to undo his known and admitted wrongs or inactions…”
The judgment went on to say that allowing such exceptions would have bigger effects: “Allowing or giving leverage to candidates or institutes to admit people who are not eligible outside of the established and applicable norms would be illegal and would hurt the quality of education and make the legal profession less efficient.”
A Timeline of Inderpal Singh’s Case of Not Following the Rules
Singh told the court that he had not passed a paper in the last year of his undergraduate studies in 2014, and he was supposed to take the test again the next year. He got into the three-year law study in June 2014, even though he still had to pass this qualification.
He had promised the college that his temporary entrance may be taken away if he didn’t finish his degree. The college, in turn, accepted this responsibility. On July 27, 2015, Singh finished his last undergraduate paper, and in November 2017, he finished his LLB course.
But when he asked the Bar Council of Himachal Pradesh to let him become an advocate, they turned him down. The Bar Council was clear: letting him into law school before he graduated was a direct violation of the rules for legal education. The High Court’s single bench also agreed with the Bar Council’s ruling from July of last year.
The court takes a strong stand on the integrity of education.
The division bench repeated the rule that “Diluting or easing out prescribed mandates, relating to eligibility for admission to a course shall lead to educational chaos, which shall result in disturbing the entire education system, except in eventualities, when, the same is expressly permitted under the Statute or Rules.”
The judgment clearly stated that Singh’s “failure to meet the eligibility requirements set out in the norms for admission to a course of study is an illegality, and ignorance of the law is no excuse. The appellant-writ petitioner (Inderpal) has no standing or right to seek correction of an illegality in admission to the LLB Course made outside the norms, and this inherent ineligibility has made the appellant-writ petitioner ineligible to enroll as an advocate under the Statute and Rules.”
This decision is a strong reminder to both people who want to become lawyers and schools that they must strictly follow the basic requirements for professional courses, especially in a field as important as law.