The Madras High Court Bench here on Wednesday directed the State Government, represented by the Principal Secretary, Law, Courts and Prisons Department to take necessary steps for introducing LLM courses in nine different branches of law at the government law college here within a year.
A Division Bench of Justices A. Selvam and P. Kalaiayarasan passed the order on a public interest litigation petition filed by advocate N. Jeyaram Sidharth, through his counsel RM. Arun Swaminathan, claiming that the government law colleges in different districts in the State provided LLM courses in only one or two branches of law.
The petitioner pointed out that Tamil Nadu Dr. Ambedkar Law University had approved LLM courses in Business Law, Constitutional Law and Human Rights, Intellectual Property Law, International Law and Organisation, Environmental Law, Criminal Law, Labour Law, Administrative Law, Taxation Law and so on.
However, the government law college here offered LLM course only in property law. Similarly, the government college in Tiruchi and Tirunelveli offered courses only in Labour Law and Constitutional Law respectively; he claimed and sought a direction to introduce the course in all branches of law at the law college here.
During the course of hearing, Special Government Pleader M. Govindan stated that the law college here does not have the infrastructure required for introduction of that many courses for the Master’s degree in law. To this, Mr. Justice Selvam said that it was the bounden duty of the State to provide the infrastructure if it was not available at present.
