The Bar Council of Tamil Nadu & Puducherry has raised a red flag over what it calls an impending financial freeze, triggered by a Supreme Court ruling that restricts enrolment charges to a bare ₹750 — an amount frozen in time since 1993, but expected to bankroll the entire machinery of legal regulation in 2025.
In a detailed appeal dispatched to the Union Law Ministry, the Council has urged a swift amendment to the Advocates Act, arguing that the three-decade-old fee cap has collided with present-day realities. Rising costs, digital infrastructure, administrative upgrades, and welfare obligations have turned the ₹750 ceiling into a bottleneck the system can no longer work around.
The letter cites the Supreme Court’s decision in Gaurav Kumar v. Union of India (2024), which firmly held that no bar council — state or national — may collect a rupee more than the statutory fee under Section 24(1)(f). Any amount taken during enrolment, no matter how it is described, must count as enrolment fee and therefore stay within the limit.
According to the Council, that limit now undermines everything a bar council is legally expected to do under Sections 6 and 7 of the Advocates Act. With no government grants to lean on, enrolment collections have long been the primary lifeline funding record-keeping, disciplinary processes, inspections, training programmes, continuing legal education, and the overall regulatory backbone of the profession.
The Council emphasizes that even the Supreme Court acknowledged the sweeping financial consequences of its ruling. What once covered routine administrative tasks now fails to cover even the cost of keeping systems running — especially after digitisation drives, biometric integration, online registration platforms, enhanced verification protocols, and the welfare support extended to lawyers during the pandemic.
The warning is stark: without legislative intervention, basic operations will be strained, and welfare schemes — especially those supporting young or economically fragile lawyers — may be the first to suffer. A weakened bar council, it cautions, risks eroding professional standards and undermining the independence that the legal system depends on.
The representation has also been circulated nationwide, urging other state bar councils to join in pressing for an overdue, inflation-era update to the law.
