Putting a pause on the ongoing tussle between students and the Bar Council of India (BCI), the Delhi High Court has asked Delhi University to admit 2,310 students in the LLB course for the 2017-18 academic session.
Manmohan and Justice Vinod Goel, in an interim order, reasoned, “Don’t reduce the number of seats. Students want to study, let them study. DU has been teaching 2,310 students till now. You (BCI) decided to reduce the seats to half. We need time to decide the case. Till then let 2,310 study.”
The bench has posted the matter for the next hearing on August 21st.
The court’s order came from a PIL by lawyer Joginder Kumar Sukhija, against the decision of the 800+ seat cuts. The petition asserted that by reducing the seats, public money, which was used to provide grant to the varsity, would not be put to optimal use. Other than that, a large number of students will be affected if the seats were reduced.
In August 2016, the BCI has asked Delhi University (DU) to admit a maximum of 1,440 students in its three centers LLB courses, and to shutdown colleges offering law courses in the evening shifts. The policy decision of shutting down evening colleges has been taken after the BCI reported that the law programmes offered in evening and night hours do not comply with rules that appropriate the quality of legal education that is imparted to students.
However, Delhi University opposed the reduction of seats for the law graduate course, on grounds that it had improved its infrastructure and increased the strength of its teaching faculty.
Earlier this month, BCI had also imposed a penalty of Rs 30 lakh on DU for not paying affiliation fees and continuing to teach without permission.
Following the seat cut proposal, many protests have been held across the campus against the proposal. While, this latest development is seen as a major relief to law aspirants, but whether or not there will be a seat cut in the next academic session will only be made clear after August 21st.
Image Credits: DU Beat
Niharika Dabral
[email protected]
Comments are closed.