Why Make It Public? Delhi High Court Asks BCD To Decide Plea Against Disclosure Of Advocates' Personal Info On 'Enrolment Status' Portal

The Delhi High Court has asked the Bar Council of Delhi (BCD) to decide a plea seeking removal or masking of advocates' personal information, including residential addresses, mobile numbers, dates of birth and parents' names, from its publicly accessible online “Enrolment Status” portal.

The plea, filed by advocate Aditya Chauhan, alleged that the BCD's portal allows anyone to access an advocate's personal particulars merely by entering the enrolment number and year, without requiring any login, OTP, CAPTCHA or other authentication.

A division bench comprising Chief Justice DK Upadhyaya and Justice Tejas Karia directed that the plea be treated as a representation by BCD and decided appropriately.

“The petition be considered and decided within eight weeks,” the Court said, while disposing of the matter.

During the hearing today, the Bench questioned BCD's counsel, saying that while it should maintain the records but why make the same visible.

The counsel appearing for the lawyers' body responded that unlike the case of electoral roll, the details of lawyers in the case at hand will appear only when enrolment number is entered.

The counsel also said that the petition may be ordered to be treated as representation and will be decided by the BCD.

The petitioner contended that while an online facility for verifying an advocate's enrolment serves a legitimate public purpose, unrestricted disclosure of personal information is not necessary for such verification.

The petition submits that Section 17 of the Advocates Act, 1961, requires State Bar Councils to prepare and maintain a roll containing the “names and addresses” of enrolled advocates, but does not require or authorise collection, maintenance or disclosure of their mobile numbers, dates of birth or parents' names for the purposes of the roll.

It is further contended that Section 19 of the Advocates Act, which requires the State Bar Council to transmit an authenticated copy of the roll to the Bar Council of India, does not contemplate unrestricted and unauthenticated public disclosure of the roll or information beyond it.

The plea alleges that even disclosure of residential addresses through an unauthenticated public portal, without safeguards, raises concerns under the proportionality standard governing the right to privacy.

Title: ADITYA CHAUHAN v. Bar councillor India & ORS

Case Number: WP(C) 12711/2026