Ministry of Law and Justice and the Bar Council of India (BCI) have given permission to set up 64 new law colleges in order to strengthen the legal education system in India. These Colleges can start their session from the academic year 2015-16.
Total proposals received and how many colleges have been granted approval?
116 proposals for setting up new colleges in various states were received by the Ministry out of which 64 colleges have been given affiliation keeping in mind the Supreme Court’s verdict on checking fake universities before giving nod for admissions.
The initiative has been taken by BCI to frame strict rules for granting affiliation to new colleges which were established in October last year. BCI had earlier informed Delhi University's Faculty of Law for not submitting relevant papers to renew its affiliation due to which the recently passed out graduates were no longer eligible to be enrolled as advocates by the BCI. Similar threatening letters were also sent to nearly 70 other law colleges and universities.
As per the education rules laid down by BCI, all the law should get themselves inspected by the council to ensure that the 2008 Legal Education Rules are being followed.The council is also charging Rs 1.5 lakh as inspection fee from colleges to grant affiliation. BCI has said that unless colleges apply for inspection, their students will not be eligible for enrollment by state bar councils.
For the present academic year i.e. 2015-16 BCI got 116 applications, from which 79 were considered for inspection, 72 were verified and 64 have been given final approval. BCI also received fresh proposals of setting up three law colleges in Andhra Pradesh, four each in Assam and Meghalaya and one each in Karnataka, Chhattisgarh and Kolkata. However, inspection of these seven colleges is pending.
If Reports of the Ministry are to be believed last year 92 colleges got affiliation from BCI which is nearly double the number of new colleges that got affiliated in the entire 2012-13.
Further down the lane if the estimations of the Ministry are to be believed, the total number of law colleges in the country saw remarkable rise from just 1,200 in 2012-13 to 2,000 till 2014.
