Ceasefire on Delhi University Law Course

The Bar Council of India allowed Delhi University to admit more law students and run evening classes this year.
“The university requested for one-time concession intake of 2,310 students this year and evening classes. Our standing committee has agreed in the interest of students. We are giving this relaxation for this batch alone,” BCI chairman Manan Kumar Mishra said.
According to the Advocates Act 1961, the BCI is the regulator for legal education programmes. Each institution is supposed to take the BCI’s approval and follow its norms on infrastructure and teacher-student ratio.
The BCI rules say every institution needs to conduct five-and-a-half hours of teaching before 7pm on the days the institution is open. But this time, the regulator has allowed classes up to 9.30pm for this batch and those admitted in the past two years.
The DU’s faculty of law has never taken the approval of the BCI. The university had been contending that it was set up by the DU act before Independence and hence the provision of the Advocates act would not apply to it.
The university went to Delhi High Court after the BCI asked the faculty of law in 2014 to take the council’s approval for running the courses.
Three months ago, the High Court ruled that the university has to take BCI approval. The regulator last month sent an inspection team which recommended that the faculty of law can admit 1,440 students, 480 at each centre, keeping in view the infrastructure and faculty.
But the university had already advertised the intake of 2,310. In view of its limited facility, classes are held till 9.30pm.
It is against this backdrop that the BCI has now granted the concession.
Mishra, the BCI chief, said the university had been admitting more than the permissible strength of 1,440 students since 2011-12.
Going by the norms, students admitted above the permissible strength and those who have got degrees from evening classes cannot be allowed to practise.
However, the BCI has decided to regularise the degrees of such students by imposing a fine of Rs 3 lakh per annum on the institution.
BCI co-chairman S. Prabhakaran said the university would have to restrict its intake to 1,440 from 2017-18. It cannot hold evening classes after 7pm from next year for freshers.
Dress code
The BCI  said it would not insist on the dress code it had proposed for students in April in nearly 1,000 approved institutions.
“There is a lot of protest on the dress code. We had not made it compulsory. We are not insisting on it,” Mishra said.