Rajagopal Muralitharan

Mr Rajagopal Muralitharan filed HC/AAS 33/2022 for admission to the Bar on 11 February 2022, expecting to pass the Part B examinations he had sat in 2021. He failed, retook them in 2022 and passed. He then filed his affidavit for admission on 19 April 2023, hoping to be called at the monthly call on 10 May 2023, but the deadline for that call was 18 April 2023. He applied to abridge time by one day. The Registry then told him that his originating summons had expired on 11 February 2023 for want of any step in the action, and on the Law Society's advice he applied to reinstate it. The Singapore Institute of Legal Education, the Law Society and the Attorney-General did not object to reinstatement; the Attorney-General opposed the abridgement of time.

1. Whether the expired originating summons for admission should be reinstated under O 21 r 2(8) of the Rules of Court 2014.
2. Whether time should be abridged so the applicant could be called on 10 May 2023 despite filing his affidavit a day late.

No step had been taken in the action because the applicant could do nothing until he passed Part B, so the lapse was due to impossibility, not indolence. The right course would have been to seek an extension while the summons was still valid. His explanation, that a cause book search showed the summons as pending, was weak for someone entering a profession that demands care with deadlines, and the judge said he must learn from it. As the only problem was a moment of carelessness and no party objected, reinstatement was granted.

On abridgement, the applicant accepted he had miscalculated the required interval by a day and wanted to start work at a law firm promptly. State counsel argued that a good reason must be something unforeseen, such as a bereavement. The judge accepted that might be so but extended the indulgence, trusting the applicant would remember how close he came to derailing his own application.

Choo Han Teck J allowed the summons to reinstate the originating summons and the summons to abridge time. No order was needed on the summons for extension of time.