The voting for election to the Bar Council of Assam, Nagaland, Mizoram, Arunachal Pradesh and Sikkim was held on Wednesday across the five States to elect twenty five executive members of the council. The number of voters for this year election is 14252.
The members are elected to the office for a term of 5 years.
The elected members as well as ex-officio members elect the Chairman and Vice-Chairman and also elect its representative to the Bar Council India and also form different committees. The term of the office of the Chairman and Vice-Chairman is normally two years whereas the term of the member nominated to the Bar Council of India and that of different committees is 5 years.
A total of 42 candidates from different bar associations are contesting this year’s election out of which 26 are from Guwahati alone. The counting will be held on Saturday.
It may be mentioned that the Bar Council of India had earlier finalised the schedule for elections to different State Bar Councils in its general body meeting held on January 21, 2018. The meet declared the schedule of elections to the bar councils of Bihar, Delhi, Rajasthan, Kerala, Karnataka, Jharkhand, Assam and others.
Though the Supreme Court on August 23, 2017, directed the Bar Council of India to fix the schedule and asked the Bar Council of India and State Bar Councils to hold elections by the end of December 31, 2017, the election process got delayed as the Bar Council of India pressed for verification of candidates to eliminate fake lawyers to bring improvement in the Bar and to get deserving practicing advocates for the respective Bar councils.