Noting that law colleges meant exclusively for women in and around the city deserved all assistance from authorities, the Bombay High Court has directed the Bar Council of India (BCI) to conduct inspection and fulfil related formalities of one such proposed college in Thane without further delay.
A Bench comprising Justices B.R. Gavai and Bharati Dangre was hearing a petition filed by the Bombay Public Trust, which has proposed a law college for women in Thane.
The petitioner told the Bench that though requisite permissions from the State government and the university concerned have come, the BCI is refusing to conduct an inspection of its premises to certify the infrastructure and law course it will offer.
The Bar Council told the court that as per rules, colleges seeking permission and certification from the BCI must either own the premises on which the college is proposed to be set up, or must secure it on a leave and license basis for a minimum period of 10 years. In the present case, the BCI said, the leave and licence for the existing plot in Thane was till December only.
The petitioner told the court that the existing college building was temporary, and a permanent campus is expected to come up on a nearby plot by December.
Unreasonable delay: court
At this, the Bench noted that the BCI was delaying the inspection unreasonably. “The petitioner had applied to the competent authority for starting a law college, which is exclusively for women. It is not in dispute that this is the only law college exclusively for women outside Greater Mumbai,” the Bench said.
It added, “In this background, we find that the approach adopted by the BCI is totally hyper-technical. When the petitioner is intending of having a law college for women, rather than rendering a helping hand, the Bar Council appears to be acting as a hindrance in the establishment of the said college. No doubt the BCI would have supremacy in matters of legal education, but at the same time, it cannot totally ignore the permission and affiliation granted by the State government and university respectively.”
The Bench directed the BCI to comply with a previous HC direction asking it to conduct the inspection required for the college.
It also directed the petitioner to submit an undertaking stating that the construction of the new campus will be completed before December 2018.
