The Vikas Barala case raised larger questions on how we appoint our law officers and what constitutional ethos demands

THE RECENT WITHDRAWAL of Vikas Barala’s name from the list of law officers appointed by the Haryana government brings a momentary pause to a growing public outcry. But the issue at hand extends far beyond a single individual’s fate. At stake is not merely whether a person accused of serious criminal charges should hold public office, but also demands us to answer: what standards of integrity, impartiality, and public trust must be met by those who represent the State in court? When law officers are appointed not through rigorous ethical scrutiny but through political patronage, the justice system is no longer merely compromised in appearance, but also stands compromised in substance.If we were to take a step back from the immediacy of Barala’s appointment and examine the deeper constitutional and ethical tensions it surfaces, we would find a legal framework increasingly vulnerable to politicisation, and an institutional culture in which ethical considerations are routinely sidelined. .If we were to take a step back from the immediacy of Barala’s appointment and examine the deeper constitutional and ethical tensions it surfaces, we would find a legal framework increasingly vulnerable to politicisation..Law officers are constitutional functionaries, not mere extensions of the executiveUnlike private advocates, law officers, including Additional Advocates-General, Deputy Advocates-General, and Assistant Advocates-General, represent the State in courts and are tasked with defending public interest. They play a pivotal constitutional role in upholding justice and thus, the appointment of an individual as an Assistant Advocate General is not simply an internal administrative matter of the State. The controversy surrounding Barala’s short-lived appointment as Assistant Advocate General of Haryana cannot be adequately understood without examining the enabling legal infrastructure (or the conspicuous lack thereof) that governs such appointments. Chief among these is the Haryana Law Officers (Engagement) Act, 2016, a statute that confers wide discretion upon the Advocate General and the state government in engaging law officers. Strikingly, the Act lays down no codified qualifications, evaluative criteria, or transparency mandates for the selection of individuals to these constitutionally significant roles. The process is effectively left to executive discretion, shielded from public scrutiny and bereft of any institutionalised safeguards against nepotism, conflict of interest, or political patronage. As Barala’s case demonstrates, while the Haryana Law Officers (Engagement) Act, 2016 and its accompanying Rules prescribe experience-based criteria for such appointments, they fall conspicuously short of prescribing ethical or moral standards for eligibility. Titles like “Assistant Advocate General” are not clearly defined as distinct statutory roles under the Act but rather emerge through practice and administrative discretion, especially under Section 9A (inserted by the 2020 Amendment), which permits the Advocate General to redesignate existing law officers without committee vetting, so long as they meet numerical experience thresholds. This lack of statutory clarity is not a technicality, but a constitutional gap. There is no legal mandate in Haryana for background verification, character scrutiny, or consideration of pending criminal proceedings. While Section 4 provides for the termination of engagement at the pleasure of the government, it lacks any provision mandating public advertisement, competitive selection, or independent oversight. The Rules framed under the Act, particularly the 2017 Haryana Law Officers (Engagement) Rules, delegate significant discretion to the Advocate General in the shortlisting process, but similarly refrain from institutionalising transparent or consultative mechanisms. This is unlike jurisdictions such as Kerala, for instance, where the Advocate General’s institutional role acts as a modest check on executive fiat..A Delhi district court’s ‘modesty’ verdict goes one step ahead in de-normalising misogynist slurs.In effect, Haryana’s framework treats law officers as politically available posts, not constitutional fiduciaries. But this is squarely contradicted by recent Supreme Court dicta. In Mahabir v. State of Haryana (2025), the Court categorically asserted that public prosecutors and law officers must be appointed solely on merit and integrity, and not on the basis of political favour. As the Court observed, law officers are not partisan agents of the State government but “independent and responsible” statutory authorities who assist the judiciary in reaching just conclusions. If the State’s legal representatives are meant to embody impartiality, independence, and fairness, then the process by which they are appointed must reflect those very values. Structural failures in the appointment process and its symbolic violenceThe law, of course, does not bar individuals from public appointments merely because of past accusations or social backlash. But there exists, at the very heart of constitutional governance, the idea that certain offices require a higher standard of public trust. This is not simply about "moral turpitude" in the narrow, penal sense. It is about ethical suitability, accountability, and the idea that the legal system should not be represented by individuals whose appointments may corrode its credibility. As constitutional theorists have long argued, the legitimacy of law is not sustained only through coercive authority or statutory compliance; it rests on public faith, earned through fairness, competence, and integrity in institutional life. To appoint a person whose name is deeply entangled in a stalking case is to dismiss the symbolic burden of that office. In a country where legal redress for gender-based violence is already fraught, such acts amount to institutional betrayal: the State not only fails to protect but appears to elevate those accused under its own legal processes..The Vikas Barala episode is not an aberration; it is a symptom of a larger institutional malaise, where appointments to high legal office are made through opaque processes, untethered from either constitutional ethos or ethical reflection..This symbolic violence, the casual erasure of what the appointment represents, is not without consequence. It undermines the social legitimacy of constitutional offices and hollows out public trust. As feminist theorists have long argued, the harm of gender-based violence is not merely physical or legal but also structural, it lies in the everyday signals that tell survivors that their experiences do not matter, that power shields its own, and that legal institutions are built to withstand criticism, not enable accountability. The Vikas Barala episode is not an aberration; it is a symptom of a larger institutional malaise, where appointments to high legal office are made through opaque processes, untethered from either constitutional ethos or ethical reflection. If this controversy has reignited public concern, it must also invite us to reflect on the structural and normative frameworks that allow such appointments to recur with impunity. A meaningful jurisprudence of appointments must therefore account not only for competence and eligibility but also for public perception, symbolic resonance, and moral responsibility. It is not enough that law officers represent the government, they must also embody the law’s promise of justice, integrity, and impartiality.

The Vikas Barala case raised larger questions on how we appoint our law officers and what constitutional ethos demands

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