Can an Advocate From Another State Appear Before MahaRERA or an MSE Facilitation Council? Section 30 Explained

One enrolment, one country

The Advocates Act, 1961 built a single, unified legal profession for India. An advocate enrolls once, with any State Bar Council, and that enrolment is entered on the state roll. But here is the crucial architecture: the state in “State Bar Council” describes the administrative body that maintains the roll, not the territory of the advocate’s rights. There is no such thing as a Gujarat licence to practice or a Maharashtra licence to practice. There is only the Indian advocate, enrolled somewhere, entitled everywhere. Section 30 makes that entitlement explicit. It says that every advocate whose name is entered in the state roll shall be entitled as of right to practise throughout the territories to which the Act extends, in all courts including the Supreme Court, before any tribunal or person legally authorised to take evidence, and before any other authority or person before whom the advocate is by law entitled to practise. Notice the phrase as of right. Appearing across state lines is not a courtesy extended by the forum, not a permission to be applied for, but a statutory right. And notice the breadth: not just courts, but tribunals, and any person legally authorised to take evidence. Parliament wrote the clause wide on purpose. There is a historical curiosity worth telling clients, because it explains older folklore. Section 30 sat dormant on the statute book for half a century and was brought into force only on 15 June 2011. Before that, practice rights across forums rested on a patchwork of other provisions, and some of the “you need a local lawyer” instinct in business circles is a fossil from that earlier era. Since 2011, the position has been clean, and courts, including the Supreme Court in its decisions on the right to practise, have treated the advocate’s all India right as fundamental to the profession’s design.

Applying it to MahaRERA

Is the Maharashtra Real Estate Regulatory Authority a forum where Section 30 bites? Comfortably. RERA authorities and their adjudicating officers are creatures of the Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act, 2016, they summon parties, take evidence on affidavit, hear arguments, and pass binding orders, quintessentially a tribunal or person legally authorised to take evidence. RERA itself contemplates representation: Section 56 expressly allows a party to appear through a legal practitioner, or a chartered accountant, company secretary, or cost accountant, before the authority and the appellate tribunal. Neither the Act nor MahaRERA’s regulations impose any requirement that the legal practitioner be enrolled with the Bar Council of Maharashtra and Goa. Your Ahmedabad advocate files a vakalatnama on the MahaRERA portal like anyone else, and after MahaRERA formalised hybrid hearings following the Bombay High Court’s 2025 directions, she can argue the matter by video without leaving her chamber. We describe that filing and hearing workflow end to end in our guide to filing a MahaRERA complaint online from anywhere in India.

Applying it to MSE Facilitation Councils

The Micro and Small Enterprises Facilitation Council raises a more interesting puzzle, the kind lawyers enjoy over chai. The MSEFC, created under Section 18 of the MSMED Act, 2006, works in two modes. When conciliation fails, it conducts or refers the matter to arbitration under the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996, and here is the twist: Section 36 of that older statute historically restricted a conciliator from… actually, the relevant wrinkle lies elsewhere. The 1996 Act, in its conciliation chapter, contains provisions contemplating that parties appear with or without assistance, and older arbitral practice sometimes debated whether counsel could be excluded by agreement. Cut through the doctrine and the practical position is this. In the arbitration phase, parties routinely appear through advocates, and an out of state advocate stands on exactly the same footing as a local one; nothing in the MSMED Act or the 1996 Act distinguishes advocates by state of enrolment. In the conciliation phase, the process is consensual and informal, and councils across states routinely permit authorised representatives, including counsel, to participate. Some councils’ standard operating procedures encourage parties themselves to attend conciliation, which is sensible, since settlement is the goal, but that is forum management, not a bar on out of state advocates. And since much MSEFC business now moves through the online Samadhaan system with virtual hearings in many states, the geography question is shrinking toward irrelevance anyway. So the Surat exporter’s answer: his Ahmedabad advocate can represent him in the Chennai facilitation council’s arbitration, and before MahaRERA, as of right, and increasingly without anyone booking a train ticket.

The practical footnotes that keep this honest

A right to appear is not always the whole strategy, so a candid practitioner adds three footnotes. Local practice knowledge has value: knowing how a particular council schedules matters, or a particular RERA bench’s approach to interest, is intelligence an out of state advocate should acquire, sometimes by associating a local counsel for logistics while retaining strategy. Language can matter: proceedings and documents occasionally travel in the state language, and Marathi or Tamil paperwork may need translation support. And physical steps, execution proceedings, certified copies, the occasional in person evidence day, are easier with feet on the ground. None of this qualifies the legal right; it is simply the difference between a right and a plan.

Can AI help here?

In cross state representation, AI is the quiet enabler that makes the economics work. Translation models turn a Marathi order or Tamil purchase order into working English in seconds, letting your trusted advocate handle a file that would once have required a local reader. AI research tools surface the destination forum’s recent orders and procedural circulars, compressing the local knowledge gap. Drafting assistants prepare chronologies, interest computations, and first draft pleadings for forums the advocate visits only virtually. But the judgment calls, whether to concede at conciliation, how to frame relief before a RERA bench, whether a translated clause means what the machine says it means, belong to a qualified human, because Section 30 gives the right of audience to an enrolled advocate, not to software, and professional accountability follows the human signature.

When to Review This

• Section 30 of the Advocates Act gives every enrolled advocate the right to practise before every court, tribunal, and evidence taking authority in India, and both MahaRERA and MSE Facilitation Councils sit squarely within that description. No local enrolment, no permission, no local counsel requirement, and with online filing and hybrid hearings, decreasing need for travel. Choose your advocate for trust and competence; the Constitution of the profession takes care of the geography.