Manan Kumar Mishra Threatens freezes enrolment of NALSAR’s 2026 batch over campaign against CJI

Manan Kumar Mishra Threatens to Freeze Enrolment of NALSAR’s 2026 Batch Over Campaign Against CJI But What Does the Law Say on the Same?

On 13 August 2026, the Chairman of the Bar Council of India, Manan Kumar Mishra, issued a communication that should have sent a chill through every national law university in the country. He directed every State Bar Council to freeze the enrolment of the entire 2026 graduating batch of NALSAR University of Law, Hyderabad. The sole stated reason was that a section of the outgoing students had campaigned against the proposed participation of Chief Justice of India Surya Kant in the university’s convocation.

The order was framed as an interim measure. It demanded a detailed factual report from the Vice-Chancellor within three days identifying the principal organisers, the signatories, the social-media administrators, the faculty members allegedly involved, and anyone who had called for a boycott or disruption. It spoke of “groupism and dirty politics” among teachers. And it contained the now-infamous observation that a law student who shows “no regard or respect for the highest Judicial Office of the country” is “not expected to be a responsible or sensible Advocate, Teacher or a Judge” and would be a “liability on the profession.”

Hours later, after the inevitable uproar, the BCI partially retreated. The vast majority of students, it declared, were “innocent.” Enrolment was restored for the batch. The inquiry would continue, with blame shifted onto “a handful of teachers and outsiders.”

The partial retreat does not erase the original act. It only confirms what the original act already revealed: the willingness of the apex regulatory body of the legal profession to deploy the most drastic available instrument — the denial of professional entry itself — as a weapon of institutional discipline against students who had not yet even entered the profession.

The question that must now be asked, and answered with precision, is not merely political or moral. It is legal. What does the law actually say about the power that Manan Kumar Mishra claimed to exercise on 13 August 2026?

The Statutory Architecture the BCI Chose to Ignore

The Advocates Act, 1961 is not a vague enabling statute. It carefully enumerates the qualifications for enrolment in Section 24 and the limited disqualifications in Section 24A. Section 24 requires, essentially, Indian citizenship, completion of twenty-one years of age, and a law degree from a recognised university. Section 24A disqualifies persons convicted of offences involving moral turpitude, or dismissed from government service on charges involving moral turpitude, for a limited period.

Nowhere in Section 24 or Section 24A does one find the ground “participation in a campaign against the Chief Justice of India” or “organised institutional dissent regarding a ceremonial invitation.” The statute is silent on such a ground because Parliament never created it.

In Indian Council of Legal Aid & Advice v. Bar Council of India, (1995) 1 SCC 732, a three-Judge Bench of the Supreme Court, speaking through Chief Justice A.M. Ahmadi, confronted an earlier attempt by the same Bar Council of India to invent a new disqualification — an upper age limit of forty-five years for enrolment. The Court struck the rule down in unambiguous terms.

The Court held that the BCI cannot introduce a fresh disqualification not found in Section 24. To do so, the Court said, “would effectively amend Section 24 or insert a new statutory disqualification, a step that can be taken only by Parliament.” The principle is not limited to age. It is a general principle of statutory construction: the qualifications and disqualifications for entry into the profession are fixed by the legislature. The regulator cannot enlarge them by administrative fiat or by circular.

The same judgment is equally decisive on the second limb of the BCI’s claimed power. Section 49(1)(ah) empowers the Bar Council of India to make rules prescribing “the conditions subject to which an advocate shall have the right to practise.” The Supreme Court held that this provision “operates at the post-enrolment stage” only. Any rule or direction that affects pre-enrolment eligibility “falls outside this power.”

A freeze on the enrolment of an entire graduating batch — imposed before any individual student has even applied for enrolment, before any individual has been heard, and before any determination under the limited statutory disqualifications in Section 24A — is a classic pre-enrolment restriction. On the authority of the 1995 judgment, it lies outside the BCI’s statutory competence.

Collective Punishment Masquerading as Interim Prudence

Even if one were to ignore the 1995 judgment for a moment, the structure of the 13 August order reveals its own illegality. The BCI did not claim that any particular student had been convicted of an offence involving moral turpitude. It did not claim that any student had been dismissed from government service. It did not initiate any disciplinary proceeding under the Advocates Act against any individual. It simply treated the existence of a campaign critical of a proposed invitation to the Chief Justice as sufficient reason to place every graduate of the batch under a cloud of professional unfitness.

This is collective punishment. Indian administrative law has long rejected the notion that an entire class of persons can be penalised for the alleged acts of some among them without individualised determination. The Advocates Act itself is structured around individual applications, individual scrutiny, and individual disqualifications. The BCI’s order inverted that structure.

The language used by the Chairman made the inversion explicit. Students who had merely signed or supported a representation were painted with the broad brush of “no regard for the highest Judicial Office.” The distinction the order itself tried to draw — between legitimate criticism and organised disruption — was never applied in practice. The entire batch was frozen first; the distinction was promised later.

The Pattern of Rhetoric and Power

The 13 August order did not emerge from a vacuum. Only weeks earlier, the same Chairman had issued a lengthy public appeal describing recent student protests as having been “hijacked by anti-national and anti-social elements” seeking to destabilise India. Foreign adversaries, paid stone-pelters, and shadowy political funding were invoked. Lawyers and intellectuals were summoned to guide students toward “peaceful, constitutional” expression as defined by the BCI itself.

When that framing was criticised by sections of the Bar, the response was institutional defensiveness. The NALSAR order is the logical extension of the same temperament: dissent is first pathologised as contamination, then treated as evidence of professional unfitness, and finally met with the threat of exclusion from the profession itself.

This is not the historic posture of an independent Bar. The Bar’s traditional role has been to stand between the citizen and arbitrary power — including, when necessary, judicial power. When the apex regulatory body of the profession begins to treat institutional speech critical of a sitting Chief Justice as presumptive evidence of character defect, the regulator has ceased to protect the profession and has begun to police its political and institutional temperament.

The Legal Bottom Line

The law on this question is not ambiguous.

• Participation in a campaign against a proposed invitation to the Chief Justice is not a statutory disqualification under Section 24 or Section 24A of the Advocates Act.
• The Bar Council of India has no power to invent new disqualifications by circular or communication. Only Parliament can do that.
• Section 49(1)(ah) does not authorise pre-enrolment restrictions. The Supreme Court said so in 1995.
• A blanket freeze on an entire graduating batch, imposed without individualised determination and without statutory foundation, exceeds the BCI’s supervisory competence.

Manan Kumar Mishra’s order of 13 August 2026 was therefore not merely heavy-handed or politically tone-deaf. On the authority of the Supreme Court itself, it was ultra vires.

The partial retreat later the same day does not cure the excess. It merely demonstrates that the regulator recognised, under pressure, that it had stepped outside the law. The damage, however, has already been done. A generation of law students has been shown that organised institutional speech critical of the highest judicial office can result, even if only temporarily, in the threat of professional exclusion.

That is not regulation. That is intimidation. And the law, as declared by the Supreme Court three decades ago, does not permit it.