Caught in controversy after the Bar Council of India (BCI) derecognised the law courses offered at the University of Delhi, the Dean of Faculty of law said that the BCI has dropped a bombshell without any prior warning. According to Dean Ashwani Kumar Bansal, 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.
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 Rs5,000 and inspection fee of Rs1,50,000 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, the university says that since the deadline given to them was December 31, it is not fair to throw this decision on them. Bansal said that they didn’t receive any showcause notices or notice for application of inspection. “It is very unfortunate that the BCI has created this anxious situation for us. They are being too ambitious on their part to challenge such a renowned university. The BCI is saying they have told us earlier also about this but we have no record of any such communication. This letter was the first such communication received by us and we did take it into cognizance and were going to reply,” informed Bansal, adding that the university was happy with the BCI’s letter as it would help them improve their infrastructure.
Bansal said, “We are a very fair administration with no hangups. We don’t have any ego hassles and were actually looking at this very positively. This was like a silver lining for us because advancement in the campus could happen with it.”
Meanwhile, the Vice Chancellor conducted a meeting at noon on Friday to discuss this matter. However, the Dean of Faculty of law was not present in the meeting. So far, the university is planning to handle the matter internally. Nonetheless, sources have said that if the matter persists for over two weeks, there will be judicial scrutiny.
The Faculty of law was established in 1924 and has produced world-renowned alumni.