New Delhi, The Supreme Court docket on Tuesday grilled the Bar Council of India for “interfering in academic affairs of law colleges” and stated the duty must be left with academicians.
Why interfering in tutorial affairs, go away it to consultants: SC to BCI
A bench of Justices Surya Kant and N Kotiswar Singh was listening to pleas difficult the BCI’s 2021 resolution to scrap the one-year LLM course within the nation and de-recognise overseas LLMs.
“Why are you interfering in academic affairs? Why should BCI decide curriculum, etc., of law colleges. Some academic expert should take of these things. In this country there is a very big class of lawyers. You have an onerous statutory responsibility of updating their knowledge and organising training programmes for them,” the bench stated.
The highest court docket added, “You can have training on art of drafting, understanding case laws, etc., and it should be part of your statutory responsibility. The curriculum has to be entrusted to the academicians.”
When senior advocate Vivek Tankha, showing for the BCI, stated it was the “existing system”, the bench remarked, “You have imposed yourself and claiming you are the only authority in this country.”
Tankha revealed a committee of stakeholders headed by a former chief justice of India was set as much as study and advocate a framework to equate one-year and two-year LLM levels.
The highest court docket, nonetheless, expressed its dissatisfaction over the standard of judicial officers being inducted on the grass-root stage below the present authorized training system.
“In legal education, the judiciary is the primary stakeholder…What kind of officers are we getting? Are they properly sensitised. Do they have compassion. Do they understand the ground realties or just deliver mechanical judgments?” it requested.
The bench stated academicians might study the problems.
“You take care of your responsibility. There are almost 10 lakh lawyers in the country and you should focus on training them rather than going on inspection to law colleges,” the bench stated.
Senior advocate Abhishek Singhvi, showing for the Consortium of Nationwide Legislation Universities, stated the BCI was making an attempt to intervene with not simply LLMs, but additionally PhDs, diplomas.
“The purpose of BCI was to regulate entry into legal profession. Then came the statute which was on admission. We are not saying abolish the two year course but will a practising lawyer like to do a two-year LLM or a one-year LLM?” Singhvi stated.
The highest court docket sought responses from the Centre and the College Grants Fee on the difficulty and requested lawyer basic R Venkataramani to help within the matter.
The court docket then posted the matter in July.