Agartala, March 8, 2017: About 260 lawyers in Tripura have been identified as non-practising by the Bar Council of Tripura; including Ramendra Debnath – state assembly Speaker along with several political stalwarts.

Samir Ranjan Burman, former chief minister, Subal Bhaumick, Vice President of BJP's State unit and Sudip Roy Burman, Trinamool Congress (TMC) leader are some of the eminent politicians included in the list as per a PTI report.

As per instructions from the Bar Council of India (BCI), the identification process of non-practising lawyers had begun an year ago and was now complete with the list, Piyush Kanti Biswas, Chairman of Bar Council of Tripura informed the PTI.

Biswas said, " We have submitted the lists of the non-practising lawyers to all the courts and they would be barred from practising advocacy from now on and their membership from Bars would be cancelled."

Another senior advocate said that the debarred lawyers would have to apply freshly seeking permission to restart their practice. Their prayer would be examined as per the Certificate and Place of Practice (Verification) Rules 2015.

He said that the names of all the lawyers who had not been practising in the courts for the last five consecutive years have been delisted from the list of practising lawyers.

The Supreme Court had ordered the BCI to run such a process of identification of non-practising lawyers.

– prepared by Nikita Saraf, Twitter: @niki_saraf