Supreme Court allows provisional enrolment for law graduates with distance-learning degrees

The Supreme Court of India has cleared the way for regular law graduates to provisionally enrol as advocates, even if they obtained their previous school or undergraduate qualifications through distance or open learning.

In an interim order, a division bench of Justice Vikram Nath and Justice Sandeep Mehta directed the Telangana State Bar Council to enrol the affected graduates. The decision offers immediate relief to a batch of qualified students who have been locked out of the legal profession while a broader dispute over regulatory rules winds its way through the courts.

Why the graduates were blocked

The dispute centres on the interpretation and application of Rule 5 of the Bar Council of India’s Rules of Legal Education, 2008. State bar councils have interpreted this rule to block candidates from enrolling as advocates if any part of their prior education was not completed through a traditional, regular route. This block has been applied even when the candidates later completed a standard, regular, three-year LLB course in person at a recognised university.

Among those shut out were students who completed their secondary schooling or earned bachelor's degrees from Dr BR Ambedkar Open University in Hyderabad before going on to finish regular law degrees.

Another applicant, Kevin Sukirthy, completed a commerce degree via distance learning from Madurai Kamaraj University in 2006. He later graduated with a regular LLB from a college affiliated with Osmania University in 2020. When the Telangana State Bar Council rejected his enrolment application, he challenged the decision, but the Telangana High Court upheld the bar council's stance in October 2024. Faced with these blocks, the graduates appealed to the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court's ruling

In the ruling, delivered on 9 September 2026 in the case of STS Gladies v. Bar Council of India, the judges sought to balance the interests of the aspiring lawyers with the regulatory authority of the bar.

The division bench did not rule on the ultimate validity or interpretation of Rule 5 itself, deciding to save that complex question for a final hearing. However, the judges made it clear that keeping these graduates in professional limbo while the courts deliberate was unnecessarily damaging.

Denying them the right to practice "would cause avoidable prejudice to the persons concerned and prevent them from entering the legal profession notwithstanding completion of their regular law degrees," the bench wrote.

The court clarified that this enrolment is strictly provisional. It does not create any permanent rights or "equity" in favour of the graduates, and their final status will depend entirely on how the Supreme Court ultimately rules on the main civil appeals. In the meantime, their enrolment remains subject to standard document verification and other routine bar requirements.