Ed Voice
By Shalini S. Sharma
The Bar Council of India (BCI) has been sniping at Delhi University’s Faculty of Law (FOL) for a couple of years now. It is the very same “lawfac”, as it is popularly known, which has been at the forefront of legal education in India. In fact, BCI’s own website lauds the role played by lawfac in creating an outstanding legal workforce for the country. It says, “The Faculty [of law, Delhi University] counts many eminent personalities among its alumni including a former Chief Justice of India, Y. K. Sabharwal, judges, senior advocates, cabinet ministers and social activists.” Why is it then that the council has been trying its best to get the number of seats in lawfac drastically reduced?
Together at its three centres, FOL has been admitting more than 2,200 students every year but BCI is insisting on capping that number to 1440. It has been citing rulebook to assert that a single centre cannot take more than 300 students every year. By that logic, it says, the number of fresh students every year at the three centres together should not exceed 900 but that it is ready to relax this rule, as per guidelines, and allow not more than 1440 seats. Why, after relaxation, this number cannot be 2,300 as has been the case for the past several decades, and should only be 1,440, is something which it will be explaining to the court in due course of time in an ongoing court case.
But the tussle does provide some wholesome food for thought:-
- It is nobody’s case that BCI is not the pre-eminent body for legal education, as also with other things legal, in India. In fact, the council has been doing a commendable job of keeping pace with the growing requirements of legal education in the country. Among all the boards of technical education in India – Medical Council of India, Nursing Council of India, Council of Architectures and the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) – it is BCI which has been able to maintain a tight grip over its domain, i.e., structuring the contours of legal education. While other boards have been giving policy directions and regulating approvals etc for starting new institutes or courses, they have not been able to fully control or regulate the entry of students in the system. While they do define the number of permissible students in a particular course or class, they are not able to have a say in who gets admitted through a common entrance exam. Whether that is something desirable or not is a different question but the fact remains that be it engineering, business or medical colleges, they have all been conducting their own entrance exams and enrolling students through criteria which are tightened or loosened as per their requirement. Some have in fact been amassing significant amounts of money through entrance exams alone. While students have had to run in hundred different directions to keep pace with the timetables of entrance exams, it is only recently that AICTE has announced that it will be moving towards a common entrance exam for all technical institutes which come under its jurisdiction. But BCI’s track record has been better on that front.
Caption: National Law School of India University in Bangalore was the first of its kind law university to be set up in India in 1987
First, as per the report of a Supreme Court-appointed committee on legal education reform, BCI successfully introduced the concept of integrated double degree course for study of law with the establishment of National Law School of India University at Bangalore, to complement the traditional three-year degree course. A number of states then followed the Karnataka example by establishing national law schools / universities of their own. As of date, a total of 13 national law schools / universities have been established through state enactments across the length and breadth of the country.
Second, it ensured that admissions to the national law universities were done through a single pipeline, i.e., through the Common Law Admission Test or CLAT. Most of the 21 national law universities today admit students through CLAT. Despite the fact that some of these universities come under the purview of different state governments, BCI has been able to keep them united through a common exam. One could argue that AIEEE and CAT do the same for IITs and IIMs and should therefore be seen as equivalent to CLAT in engineering and business education, respectively. But then the difference is that both IITs and IIMs come under the direct purview of the Central government and are not governed by an independent council, such as AICTE.
It is commendable for BCI therefore to have been able to keep the law universities under its hold.
- However, the same Supreme Court report on legal education reform also points out that, “LCI [Law Council of India] in its Report also records its dissatisfaction with the inspections carried out by BCI for the purpose of granting permission or recognition to law colleges. It is noted that in many cases, the inspection undertaken was merely perfunctory. Also contemplated in the Report is the possible conflict of opinion between BCI and UGC [University Grants Commission] in case of simultaneous inspections undertaken by both the statutory bodies. LCI, therefore, recommends that the BCI Rules governing inspections be suitably amended to provide that at least one academician from a State different from the one where the law college in question is located also forms part of the inspection team.” It is pertinent to note here that in the present BCI versus FOL case too there is a point of contention between the sides related to inspection. According to media reports, FOL says that Rs 11.5 lakh has already been deposited in January this year with BCI to carry out the next round of inspection of infrastructure and other LLB related facilities in the university. But the exercise is yet to be conducted. The high court has asked BCI to explain why inspection has not been done even though the fee was paid.
- While national law universities, as also several private law universities, are doing a very good job of providing high quality alternative to those students who are not able to get admission in public funded universities which offer courses at nominal fee, the fact remains that they offer legal education at a price which is outside the means of most middle-class families. The annual fee at almost all national law universities, which provide fully residential five-year courses, is close to Rs 2 lakh. A five-year degree programme therefore costs upwards of Rs 10 lakh. Same is the scenario at private law universities. Compare this to the Rs 5,000 per annum fee which the Faculty of Law at Delhi University charges for a five-star rated course. It not only houses best faculty in the country but has also now upgraded its infrastructure and set up a new world-class facility at North Campus.
For BCI to press for reduction of seats in such a campus is therefore surprising. Or is it that sundry other universities are losing high quality (and high paying) clientele to this premier institution and are therefore wary of its fraction-of-the-cost model?
(The writer is a freelance journalist)
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