Prime Minister Narendra Modi will inaugurate the two-day ‘International Lawyers Conference 2023’ organised by the Bar Council of India (BCI) on September 23 here at Vigyan Bhavan.
During the inauguration ceremony on Saturday, Chief Justice of India D Y Chandrachud will be the chief guest while Union Law Minister Arjun Ram Meghwal and Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice of the United Kingdom Alex Chalk KC will be the guests of honour, the BCI said.
In a press conference held on Wednesday, BCI chairman and senior advocate Manan Kumar Mishra said that the prime minister will inaugurate the ceremony. Union Home Minister Amit Shah will be the chief guest in the valedictory ceremony on September 24, he said.
Mishra said several issues, including the rules framed by the BCI with regard to entry and regulation of foreign lawyers and offshore law firms, will be discussed during the two-day conference.
"We are going to discuss all these issues with foreign law firms and their representatives after the valedictory session in this conference only," he said, adding that the conference will be of immense help for the legal fraternity and law students.
Mishra said Union minister Bhupender Yadav and others, including three apex court judges – Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul, Justice Sanjeev Khanna and Justice P S Narasimha – will also attend the valedictory ceremony scheduled on Sunday.
Attorney General R Venkataramani and Solicitor General Tushar Mehta will be present during the inaugural ceremony on Saturday, he said.
As per details shared by the BCI, 10 technical sessions on several topics, including ‘Artificial Intelligence: Transforming the Legal Landscape’, ‘Intellectual Property Rights in a Borderless World’, and the ‘Changing Landscape of Criminal Law’, will be held during the conference and several judges of the apex court and others would participate in them.
"During the valedictory sessions, the BCI will for the first time felicitate legal luminaries and confer them with ‘BCI Vidhi Ratna Awards 2023’. The awardees include senior advocates K Parasaran, Fali S Nariman and K K Venugopal. Senior advocates Ram Jethmalani and Soli J Sorabjee will be felicitated posthumously," the BCI chairman said.
Mishra said, "In the month of March (this year), the BCI had framed rules with regard to the entry and regulation of foreign lawyers. Then in June, we were in London and there were talks held with the Bar Council of England and Wales, the Law Society of England and Wales and representatives of several multinational law firms. They were very much keen on the entry and regulation (of foreign lawyers) in our country."
In March this year, the BCI had taken a significant decision to permit foreign lawyers and law firms to practise in areas such as foreign law, international legal issues and arbitration matters, saying that the legal fraternity here may be left behind if it sleeps over the matter.
The decision to notify the Bar Council of India Rules for Registration and Regulation of Foreign Lawyers and Foreign Law Firms in India, 2022 had evoked mixed reactions from bar leaders and eminent lawyers.
-With PTI Input
