Lawyer seeks deferment of AoR exam to December due rise in COVID-19 cases

In view of the unprecedented surge in COVID-19 cases throughout the country including in the national capital, lawyer and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Ashwini Kumar Upadhyay on Thursday wrote to the secretary-general of the Supreme Court, seeking deferment of the Advocate On Record (AoR) examination scheduled in June.

The central government has already cancelled the Class 10th CBSE board examination in light of the upsurge of COVID cases and the same might be done for class 12th examinations as well, Upadhyay said in his letter to the secretary-general of the apex court.

"Many other examinations have been cancelled or postponed. Since the AOR exam is of great importance and cancelling it might affect the fate of many aspiring lawyers, it might be in everyone's best interest to postpone the exam for six months and conduct it in December 2021," the letter said.

The new variant which has been infecting around two lakh people every day is very dangerous and it is more contagious than the older variant, he said.

Upadhyay said many Supreme Court staff members have been infected by COVID-19, which makes the conduct of the exam even more dangerous and noted that due to the huge possibility of infection, judges are hearing the matters from their residences.

He said many of the lawyers who will appear for the examination are above the age of 35 and even those who are not will be put at risk, as 50 per cent of the new COVID cases are below the age of 35, he said.

"Not only this, the new variant is not even detectable by the RT-PCR test. Therefore, conducting the exam in June will be a serious threat to the life of advocates. It is my humble request to postpone the AOR examination till December as the rate with which the cases are increasing is exponential," Upadhyay said.

( With inputs from ANI )