In a significant move aimed at cleaning up both the electoral and professional integrity of the legal fraternity, the Supreme Court of India on Tuesday ordered a complete overhaul and timely conclusion of the long-delayed State Bar Council elections across the country.
A Bench led by Chief Justice of India-designate Justice Surya Kant, also comprising Justices Ujjal Bhuyan and N Kotiswar Singh, fixed a strict, judicially-monitored schedule and introduced a crucial rule: only lawyers who have applied for verification of their law degrees will be eligible to vote.
Strict Electoral Schedule and Oversight
The Court, holding that delays spanning years had crippled the functioning of bar councils, laid down a fixed, non-negotiable five-phase nationwide schedule for 17 State Bar Councils to complete their elections by the end of April. The Bench made it unequivocally clear that no extension will be granted under any circumstance.
Phased Election Timetable (Must Conclude by April 30, 2026)
| Phase | Deadline | State Bar Councils (Examples) |
| Phase I | January 31 | Uttar Pradesh and Telangana |
| Phase II | February 28 | Andhra Pradesh, Delhi, Tripura, and Puducherry |
| Phase III | March 15 | Rajasthan, West Bengal, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Gujarat, and Punjab & Haryana |
| Phase IV | March 31 | Meghalaya and Maharashtra |
| Phase V | April 30 | Tamil Nadu, Kerala, and Assam |
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Note: Bihar’s process has concluded, and counting in Chhattisgarh must be completed within one month. Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, and Manipur are outside this schedule as their elections are not yet due.
Supervisory Committees
To prevent further delays and ensure compliance, the Court placed the entire exercise under rigorous judicial watch:
- High-Powered Election Committees (Regional): For each region, committees headed by retired High Court judges have been constituted to supervise the conduct of polls and handle grievances.
- National High-Powered Supervisory Committee (Appellate): An appellate body, comprising a former Supreme Court judge, a former Chief Justice of a High Court, and a senior non-contesting advocate, has been created. Crucially, the bench ruled that the decisions of this body will be final and immune from scrutiny by all civil courts and high courts.
Mandatory Degree Verification
The most significant intervention addresses the persistent concern over fake degrees and “fake entrants in the profession.”
- The Court held that electoral rolls must be tied to degree verification.
- To vote, a lawyer must have applied for verification of their law degree.
- However, drawing an analogy with delimitation exercises, the Court stated that verification cannot be used to stall the elections. Verification must continue in parallel, and any lawyer who has applied will be permitted to vote provisionally, subject to “necessary consequences” if their degree is later found to be fraudulent.
To expedite the verification process, all law universities and departments have been directed to depute special teams headed by senior faculty to authenticate degrees forwarded by state bar councils. These institutions are permitted to charge fees for this service as per their rules.
The Court also laid down fixed timelines for each stage of the electoral process—such as preparation of electoral rolls, objections, and filing of nominations—to prevent any further drift in an exercise that has seen some polls pending for nearly a decade.