Weeks after the Bar Council of India (BCI) derecognised the law courses run by the Delhi University, the matter has reached the High Court through public interest litigation. The BCI and Delhi Bar Council (DBC) have received notices in this connection. While the Dean of the law Faculty claims that the university is not at fault, the BCI has temporarily stopped the enrolment of DU students as advocates.
However, the matter which started with the BCI sending a letter to DU on September 22 will not be resolved for another month. A Division Bench of Chief Justice G Rohini and Justice RS Endlaw sought response from BCI and DBC by November 5 on a PIl filed by Vijay Kumar Chaurasia, an Assistant Professor at the law Faculty.
After stating several rules which suggested that the Faculty of law should have applied for inspection, the Bar Council of India sent a letter to the Delhi University on September 3 which mentioned that “in absence of extension of approval of affiliation of the law Centre, students who were admitted in the sessions 2011-12 onward and passed out from the academic year 2014-15 are not eligible for enrolment as advocates.”
Additionally, the letter also asked the university to “submit an application with requisite fee of Rs 5,000 and inspection fee of Rs 1,50,000 for each centre on or before December 31, 2014.”
However, on September 22, another letter referring to the September 3 letter was sent to the university stating that by “typographical mistake” in the previous letter the batch of students was typed as 2014-15 instead of 2013-14.
Thus, BCI, which regulates legal education in the country, asked State Bar councils not to enrol the student who passed out from the three centres of DU’s law Faculty as advocates.
The DU law Faculty failed to obtain extension from the BCI beyond the academic year 2010-11. Every year, the law Faculty admits around 2,000 students in its three centres, two of which run in the evening. Seeking quashing of the BCI order, Chaurasia told the court that the decision was arbitrary and against the legal Education Rules, 2008.
Meanwhile, the dean of law Faculty Ashwani Kumar Bansal said that the BCI gave them time till December 31 to apply for inspection failing which enrolments as advocates for the batch of 2014-15 would get cancelled. “However, they sent a letter this week saying that the previous letter had a typographical error as they were referring to the batch of 2013-14 for the cancellation of enrolment. Before we could even react to this last minute notice, the news came in on Thursday that they have derecognised our course,” said Bansal.
Bansal added that he is fighting this out with the BCI and will do his best to get the students their rightful enrolment in the State Bar Councils.