CHENNAI
In a shocking revelation, the Bar Council of India (BCI) has informed the Supreme Court that government law colleges in Tiruchi, Coimbatore and Vellore had been conducting law courses without its approval, as required under Section 7 of the Advocates Act of 1961, for the last several years and that they had not even bothered to make applications for approval.
The submission was made before Justices Arun Mishra and Uday Umesh Lalit on Wednesday during the hearing of an appeal preferred by the State government last year challenging a judgment passed by the Madras High Court on October 26, 2016, declaring the Tamil Nadu Establishment of Private Law Colleges (Prohibition) Act of 2014 as illegal and unconstitutional.
During the last hearing of the appeal on April 18, the judges had directed the BCI to make its stand clear in respect of opening of law colleges in the country. They had pointed out that the council was one of the statutory bodies entrusted with the responsibility of promoting legal education and laying down standards of such education in consultation with the universities in the country. Further, Section 7(1)(i) of the Advocates Act stated that one of the functions of the BCI was to recognise educational institutions whose degree in law would be a qualification for enrolment as an advocate, and for that purpose, it should visit and inspect all such institutions either directly or through the members of the State-level bar councils.
Therefore, the judges had directed the BCI to submit countrywide data with respect to the law colleges which were functioning without obtaining the council’s approval of their affiliation with the respective universities. Accordingly, BCI secretary Srimanto Sen filed an affidavit listing the names of colleges that were being run without its approval. In so far as Tamil Nadu was concerned, the BCI informed the court that the government law college in Tiruchi (offering three- and five-year law courses) had obtained its approval only till the academic year 2007-08 and those in Coimbatore in Vellore had been approved up to 2010-11. Thereafter, the three colleges had not applied for approval.
Hearing adjourned
The court was also informed that the government law colleges in Ramanathapuram, Dharmapuri and Villupuram, which were started only from the academic year 2017-18, had nevertheless applied to the BCI seeking approval of their affiliation with the Tamil Nadu Dr. Ambedkar Law University in Chennai.
After taking the affidavit on file, the judges adjourned the State appeal for further hearing to the last week of July.
In the meantime, they permitted Vanniar Educational Trust, headed by S. Ramadoss of Pattali Makkal Katchi, to start Saraswathi Law College at Tindivanam subject to the final outcome of the appeal since the High Court judgment had not been stayed.
It was while passing a common judgment on cases filed by the educational trust as well as the Advocates Forum for Social Justice, represented by its president K. Balu, that the first Division Bench of the High Court comprising its then Chief Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul (now a Supreme Court judge) and Justice R. Mahadevan had struck down the 2014 Act as illegal.
