However, while the bar council's I-Cards are meant to check fraudulent lawyers or bogus voting during the bar council elections, those of AAWI are expected to control crowding at the two bar rooms, nos 36 and 18, at the court. ``We plan to pass a resolution to this effect,'' according to senior advocate V A Gangal, who was recently elected president of the AAWI.

``Henceforth, only lawyers with AAWI I-Cards will be allowed into these bar rooms.'' The over 150-year-old structure of the Bombay High Court, Gangal explains, was meant to accommodate around three judges and 50 lawyers.

Instead, the court now houses has 21 judges and about 2,000 lawyers. As a result, the two roomsallotted to the AAWI, on the ground and first floors, are choc-a-bloc, including both lawyers and their clients. Senior lawyers, their juniors and clients hardly have any room to manoeuvre. Clients often do not get a place to sit and some lawyers refer to this as a game of ``musical chairs'' quite literally. Moreover, with the AAWI already registering about 1,300 members and expecting a few hundred more to join, space has become a problem, Gangal says. At the very least, he says, entry of clients into the rooms should be restricted. ``At the Supreme Court, there is a different room for conferencing with clients. Over here too, we could stop clients at the door, ask them which lawyer they have come to meet and then call the lawyer to confer with his clients outside the bar room,'' he says.

Every day, scores of lawyers from mofussil areas and districts in the state approach the high court either to pursue their cases or to meet senior lawyers for counsel. There are around 60,000 registered lawyers with thestate bar council, 45,000 of them practising lawyers. At present, the AAWI's two rooms can accommodate only around 450 members. ``We need a room at least four times bigger to accommodate everybody,'' he says. He admits there is no scope to increase the load on the high court building either.

Almost every inch of open space in is used either as office space or to stack records. A few of the court offices have also been shifted to the PWD building next door. There are not many, however, who believe that this proposal will work. Says former AAWI president and present member of the state bar council, Dilip Bhonsle, ``You cannot restrict the entry of lawyers from the lower courts or other districts, or from various parts of the country since no lawyer is restricted from practising in these courts. How can you have a system restricting only AAWI members' entry?''

Pointing out that it is only because there are clients that lawyers exist, he says: ``How can we work if clients are not allowed to come in to meetus? And one can understand if there is a conference room for clients. In this case, there is no scope for such a room here either.''

However, Gangal does not think there will be opposition. ``As far as I know, I have not met with any opposition. Lawyers from other areas can of course come into the bar room as guests. A high court is mainly for litigants. Here, you have no space for a client's room, no toilets for clients. Do we look at our own members' facilities or render services to the public?'' He says he will be writing to the state bar council for a separate, client's room in the high court.