Almost 90% of government-run law colleges lack faculty, infrastructure: BCI tells SC
New Delhi, April 16
Almost 90 per cent of government-run law colleges have an acute dearth of infrastructure and faculty, many unfilled vacancies for the last 15-20 years, the Bar Council of India (BCI) has told the Supreme Court.
In an affidavit filed in the top court, the BCI highlighted the shortage of faculty and poor infrastructure in many law colleges.Noting that the standard of legal profession has a direct bearing with the standard of law teaching, the regulator of legal education and profession said state governments were recklessly granting ‘No Objection Certificates’ (NOCs) to universities without examining their infrastructure.
The affidavit has been filed in compliance with the top court’s March 15 order asking the BCI to spell out steps to improve the standards in legal profession and legal education in India.
Narrating the problems faced by it in maintaining standards of legal education, the BCI said the implementation of its rules was in the hands of universities and state governments which granted affiliation casually, without any verification of the information provided by law colleges.
The BCI said it has earmarked around 500 law colleges across which were sub-standard/below standard and a team led by some former judges/senior advocates; noted academicians would conduct surprise visits of such institutions.
The BCI said it was considering asking senior advocates or lawyers having 25 years of standing at the Bar to engage at least five young lawyers as juniors in their chambers.
It lamented that only a few universities showed interest in research in the field of legal education as a result of which students were attracted to foreign countries for higher education.
The slow progress in improvement of legal education was due to a large number of centres for legal education (CLEs) coming up, and their failure to get good quality law teachers.
Terming the one-year LL.M. course as an “ornamental degree”, the BCI said it had tried to scrap it. However, the ‘Bar Council of India Legal Education (Post-Graduate, Doctoral, Executive, Clinical and other Continuing Education) Rules, 2020’ was challenged before the top court, it submitted.
To check mushrooming of law colleges, the BCI said it had passed a resolution in 2015 asking state governments and government universities to restrict the number of NOCs given to new law colleges. But more than 300 NOCs were granted ignoring its advice, the BCI said, adding it withdrew a similar move in 2019 after it was challenged before the Punjab and Haryana High Court.
It said many remotely situated law colleges were not receiving assistance from the University Grants Commission (UGC), Centre and state governments.
