Bar Council polls pass off peacefully

As many as 192 candidates were in the fray. Though over 90,000 lawyers have registered themselves with the bar councils, only about 56,000 were eligible to cast their vote. 

As many as 170 polling booths were set up across the state for the Bar Council elections. 

As per the election process, each eligible lawyer is entitled to cast 25 votes and the onus is on the first preference vote. 

The 25 top first preference vote-grossers will form a group while others will start getting eliminated, unless they manage to improve their prospects through second or other preference votes during subsequent counting. 

The counting process is expected to extend beyond a month, as each preference indicated in each vote has to be individually counted. 

The Madras High Court, in a bid to ensure that lawyers are able to exercise their vote freely, ruled that counting of votes will be conducted only district-wise and not booth-wise. The order was based on a contention that if the votes were counted booth-wise/bar-wise it was easy to identify whether advocates had voted for the candidate from their respective Bars.