Bar Council of Delhi requests Modi to grant Rs 500 crore aid to advocates

The Bar Council of Delhi on Friday wrote a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi demanding Rs 500 crore assistance for the legal community to mitigate their hardship during the current crisis over the coronavirus pandemic.

"The legal community in Delhi-NCR is facing severe financial crisis and the situation demands urgent intervention by the government by providing funds to the tune of Rs 500 crore from Contingency Fund of India as well as PM-CARES Fund," advocate K.C. Mittal, Chairperson of the council stated.

The Bar Council of Delhi further stated that the lockdown dealt a grievous jolt to the earning of thousands of advocates due to closure of courts. It claimed that the condition of advocates is worsening day by day making them unable to meet even the basic requirements.

"Almost four months sitting at home without any work and income and uncertainty of the resumption of the court work, has multiplied the agony. In such an emergent and disastrous situation, the citizens cannot be left high and dry," he wrote.

The letter highlighted that as per available information, PM-CARES fund has a sum of Rs 9,677.9 crore in its corpus to deal with disasters, emergencies, and situations of distress.

Quoting media reports, it states that there is Rs 8,000 crore lying in the Contingency Fund, which can be unlimitedly increased by the government for utilisation during the "unforeseen disastrous situations".

Mittal told the Prime Minister that Rs 8 crore has already been disbursed to the legal fraternity till now, adding that more efforts are being made to provide assistance in appropriate cases.

"The grant of relief will go a long way in mitigating the hardships of the advocates enrolled with the Bar Council of Delhi," he added.