Lawyers help each other to stay afloat during the pandemic

Among attorneys there exists a stark distinction between the paltry remuneration of the juniors with no regular move of earnings and the enormous quantity {of professional} charges charged by well-established senior counsel. According to a current Madras High Court order, there have been round 65,000 advocates on the rolls of the Bar Council of Tamil Nadu and Puducherry (BCTNP) as on date, and during this pandemic, the authorized fraternity had proven extraordinary camaraderie by donating beneficiant quantities of cash in the direction of the welfare of the needy.

It all started with Justice S.M. Subramaniam of the Madras High Court having the ability to see the devastation to be brought on by the pandemic during the first wave in March 2020. Right then, he donated his month-to-month wage of ₹2.25 lakh to the State authorities for the welfare of unorganised sector labourers who had misplaced their livelihood. This gesture led to the creation of an advocates reduction fund by BCTNP and lots of designated senior counsel, together with P.S. Raman, A.R.L. Sundaresan, P. Wilson, donated generously for offering monetary help to younger attorneys.

In April 2020, the Bar Council of India (BCI) Advocates Welfare Fund Committee, then chaired by S. Prabakaran, additionally pitched in by handing over a cheque for ₹40 lakh to BCTNP chairman P. S. Amalraj. Activist lawyer Sudha Ramalingam too moved a writ petition in the High Court searching for the intervention of the State authorities and the BCTNP in offering insurance coverage cowl to attorneys and their relations. She identified that many attorneys had misplaced their lives and that of their family members and that lots of them didn’t have any type of medical insurance cowl to meet medical bills.

Justices N. Kirubakaran and R. Pongiappan of the High Court discovered substance in her declare and ordered the structure of a committee chaired by the Advocate General, BCTNP representatives and specialists on insurance coverage legal guidelines to provide you with solutions on offering a medical insurance coverage for the attorneys and their relations. However, inside days after the order was handed, the second wave of the pandemic started raging and there was additionally a change in the State authorities, following the Assembly election, forcing issues to decelerate a bit with out a lot progress.

Nevertheless, it didn’t deter the attorneys from persevering with to pool of their private assets to help their colleagues. Senior counsel M. Ajmal Khan initiated a donation drive via the Tamil Nadu Senior Advocates Forum (TNSAF). He donated ₹10 lakh and urged other senior counsel to come ahead with beneficiant donations. Many senior advocates together with Mr. Raman, Mr. Wilson, A. Sirajudeen, P.H. Arvindh Pandian, M.S. Krishnan, V. Prakash, and even other advocates together with R. Gandhi, Arul Vadivel Sekar, Sadiq Raja and Sricharan got here up with beneficiant donations as soon as once more.

“Now during this second wave, we are expecting a collection of ₹ 50 lakh as corpus for this fund. This will be used for helping junior lawyers who are unable to meet medical expenses and those who are borrowing money even for funeral expenses. In our advocate community, the disparity of income is large. We, the senior advocates, are better placed in terms of income. The profession has brought us to the better economic position that we are in today and so we owe a duty to give back at least something to the profession. That is exactly the reason, we are helping ourselves,” Mr. Khan stated.