Legal practitioner

Section 2(1)(i) of the Advocates Act, 1961 defines legal practitioner as an advocate or vakil of any High Court, a pleader, mukhtar or revenue agent. The definition preserves the older classes of practitioners that existed before the Act. Section 29 now provides that there shall be only one class of persons entitled to practise the profession of law, namely advocates, and Section 33 bars anyone not enrolled as an advocate from practising in any court or before any authority, except as otherwise provided by that Act or any other law. Section 30 gives every advocate on a State roll the right to practise in all courts including the Supreme Court and before tribunals.

Several regulatory statutes define the term for their own forums. Section 15V of the SEBI Act, 1992 (Securities Appellate Tribunal), Section 56 of the Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act, 2016 (Appellate Tribunal, Regulatory Authority and adjudicating officer) and Section 35 of the Competition Act, 2002 (the Commission, extended to the Appellate Tribunal by Section 53S) define legal practitioner as an advocate, vakil or attorney of any High Court, including a pleader in practice, and allow parties to appear through legal practitioners as well as chartered accountants, company secretaries and cost accountants.

The constitutional significance lies in Article 22(1): no person who is arrested shall be denied the right to consult, and to be defended by, a legal practitioner of his choice. The BNSS builds on this. Section 38 entitles an arrested person to meet an advocate of his choice during interrogation, though not throughout it, and Section 341 requires the Court to assign an advocate at State expense where an accused in a trial or appeal before a Court is unrepresented and lacks the means to engage one.

Examiners test the categories in Section 2(1)(i), the single class of advocates under Section 29, the right under Article 22(1), and the limited right in Section 38 of the BNSS.