Mr. A.S. Chandhiok was elected as Bar Association of India President Elect, Mr. Prashant Kumar, past President LAWASIA, was elected President and Senior Lawyers Mr Gopal Subramanium, Mr. Shyam Divan, Dr. Pinky Anand, Mr. Arvind P. Datar, Mr. Chander Uday Singh, Mr. Jaideep Gupta, Mr. Krishnan Venugopal, Mr. Apurba Kumar Sharma, Mr. Mohan V. Katarki, Mr. Uday Prakash Warunjikar alonwith Mr Yakesh Anand and Mr. S.S. Naganand, were elected Vice Presidents for the term 2020-2022. Dr. Anindita Pujari was elected Hony. General Secretary for the second term.
Amidst the pandemic COVID-19 Businesses across the globe are almost at standstill, same is the case with every profession. Lawyers are no exception. The Pandemic has hit the legal system so hard that not only the lawyers, litigants are also suffering. To boost the morale of lawyers, the legal industry is trying to normalize the situation. The Governing Council of the Bar Association of India last week held its Annual General Meeting virtually. The elected representatives and nominees of the Bar Associations from all the States and Union Territories in India decided to elect its new team of office bearers and executive committee.
The meeting recognised the grave situation created by more than five (5) months of raging pandemic which has put the justice delivery system under severe strain and has restricted access to
justice and passed a resolution noting that prevailing economic distress has severely impacted the financial capacity of citizens to avail legal remedies. As such it is an immediate need of the hour
that a special Access to Justice and Legal Aid package is devised and implemented. Such a package should allot legal aid cases to lawyers undergoing financial distress due to the pandemic and
would serve to ease their financial situation without compromising dignity and independence of the legal profession. The Resolution noted that the limited functioning of courts has imposed grave restrictions on meaningful exercise of legal and fundamental rights of the citizens. Even more worryingly, it seems the pandemic has led to expansion of powers of the State, a trend discernible globally, especially powers of the police and other law enforcement agencies, opening the scope
of misuse of power and impacting the most poor and the disempowered. A robust and fully functional justice delivery system is the bedrock of democratic governance and lies at the foundation of the Rule of Law. At the same time restoration of full functioning of courts at various levels requires immediate attention to creation of infrastructure and basic facilities to ensure implementation of social distancing and other safety norms to curb spread of infection amongst other measures. The Pandemic has also seen increased adoption of technology and internet to provide access to justice and to provide legal services, and the challenges presented by it had highlighted the need for encouraging and adopting aggressively non adversarial means of dispute resolution like mediation in civil and commercial disputes
which has been a focus area for the Bar Association of India. The Bar Association of India expressed its willingness to engage constructively in structuring solutions to overcome these challenging
times and announced that it will shortly come up with its recommendation for reform and capacity building of the legal profession to meet these new challenges.