Advocates Act, 1961 — back to Table of Contents
Section 3. State Bar Councils
(1) There shall be a Bar Council for each State (or group of States/Union territories as notified), to be known as the Bar Council of that State — including separate Bar Councils constituted for Delhi; for Kerala and Lakshadweep; for Tamil Nadu and Puducherry (Bar Council of Madras); for Maharashtra and Goa with Dadra & Nagar Haveli and Daman & Diu; for Punjab, Haryana and Chandigarh; for Himachal Pradesh; for West Bengal and the Andaman & Nicobar Islands; and for Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Mizoram and Nagaland jointly.
(2) A State Bar Council consists of the Advocate-General of the State (or, for Delhi, the Additional Solicitor-General of India) ex officio, together with elected members chosen by proportional representation from advocates on the State roll — fifteen members where the electorate does not exceed 5,000, twenty members where it exceeds 5,000 but not 10,000, and twenty-five members where it exceeds 10,000.
Proviso: As nearly as possible one-half of the elected members must be persons who have been advocates on a State roll for at least ten years (including time enrolled under the earlier Indian Bar Councils Act, 1926).
(3) Each State Bar Council has a Chairman and Vice-Chairman elected by the Council in the prescribed manner.
(4) An advocate is disqualified from voting or from being a member of a State Bar Council unless he meets qualifications prescribed by the Bar Council of India; an electoral roll is maintained and revised by each State Bar Council.
(5)–(6) Savings provisions preserve the term of members elected before the 1964 and 1973 amendments respectively, pending reconstitution under the amended rules.
Note: This section has been amended repeatedly since 1961 (notably by Acts 21 of 1964, 60 of 1973, 26 of 1968, 26 of 2012, 18 of 1987 and 53 of 1970) to reflect the reorganisation of States and creation of new States/UTs. The list of specific States/UTs in sub-section (1) has changed with each reorganisation.
