Delhi High Court
Delhi High Court has refused to hear the PIL seeking establishment of a “Legal Education Commission” for the 4-year LLB course. This petition was filed by BJP leader and lawyer Ashwini Kumar Upadhyay. Rejecting the petition, Delhi High Court said that designing the course does not come within the jurisdiction of the court.
Ashwini Upadhyay had said in the petition that the court should order the Central Government to set up a Legal Education Commission.
The petition sought to constitute an LEC similar to the Medical Education Commission, comprising retired judges, law professors and lawyers, to explore the feasibility of a four-year Bachelor of Laws course like B.Tech. The petition said that the New Education Policy 2020 promotes four-year undergraduate courses, but till date the BCI has neither reviewed the five-year BA-LLB nor introduced the four-year B.Law.
Doing BTech through IIT takes 4 years of unnecessary education and that too in a specific field of engineering, whereas NLU and various other affiliated colleges provides a student with the knowledge of arts in BA-LLB or BBA-LLB. It takes 5 years of precious life.
The petition also states that the annual fees for a five-year course is higher than that of a four-year course. The petition said that former law minister late Ram Jethmalani started practicing law at the age of 17 and late veteran lawyer Fali Nariman started practicing law at the age of 21.
Ashwini Kumar Upadhyay had filed a petition demanding this which was rejected by the court. Upadhyay had said in his petition that after class 12th, a direction was sought to conduct a 3-year law degree course with a duration of 5 years. While rejecting the petition, the CJI had said that even 5 years is not enough time.
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