8 years on, PU Law Dept to reintroduce evening course

Panjab University has given the go-ahead to the Department of Laws to reintroduce three-year evening LLB course.

The university is planning to start one section with 60 seats for the course and will soon hold a meeting with the Bar Council of India for its approval. The course, which had been run by the university for almost three decades, was discontinued from academic session of 2017-18 after objections from the Bar Council of India. It was quite popular among full-time professionals, including top bureaucrats.

While the earlier course was run under the aided system, this time, the students will have to pay higher fee as the university is planning a self-financed programme. The department is likely to run the course with two regular assistant professors and some guest faculty members.

Vice-Chancellor Renu Vig said, “The Department of Laws had sent a proposal for resumption of the three-year evening law course, which has been approved by the admissions committee of the university. Now, we are awaiting the final nod from the Bar Council of India.” Before getting discontinued, the course used to have three sections with 180 seats for the evening mode. As present, the department is running five sections with around 300 seats in the day session. Now, it plans to introduce one section for evening course. “Owing to numerous queries from working professionals,

including teachers, bureaucrats and others, we asked the university authorities for their approval. Having received a green light from them, we are now preparing to take up the request with the Bar Council of India,” said Prof Vandana Arora, Chairperson, Department of Laws.

The course used to be quite popular among bureaucrats and top officers in the region. Many officers, including 1991-batch IAS officer Ashok Khemka and former IPS officer and Amritsar (North) MLA Kunwar Vijay Pratap completed their LLB from PU.