“It is humbly submitted that to attain higher education is part of Right to Life and thus the clause is violative of Article 21 of the Constitution of India. The restriction placed by the clause to admit only upto 300 students in a law college is totally unreasonable and violates Constitution of India,” the plea said.
This plea was filed by advocate Joginder Kumar Sukhija who also said that a large number of students would get in trouble, especially the ones who have completed their graduation and aspires to pursue legal studies, if the seats would get reduced.
On 31 May, The Delhi High Court demanded the response of the centre, the Bar Council of India (BCI) and the Delhi University (DU) on this plea. The Bench had procrastinated that hearing so as to providing enough time to Bar Council to consider DU’s representation.
On 5th June, The Bar Council had acknowledged the Delhi high court that it had rejected Delhi University’s representation to increase seats in the¬†Law Faculty. The bench, after contemplating said that the rejection letter won’t be considered as a speaking order as it did not give any reasons nor did it deal with the varsity’s claims that it had followed all the norms laid down by the Bar Council.
Moreover, they said that DU has been pursuing taking more than 2000 students every year since 1970 without any hindrance. And apparently, Bar Council is suing after 3 decades.
DU was asking for benefit under the exception clause of Rule 5 A of the Legal Education Rules. Under Rule 5 A, the number of seats per college or centre is capped at 300 which would come to a total of 900 seats for DU’s three law centres. Nevertheless, it can be exceeded under some exception plights.
On opposing this, the lawyer from Bar Council side exclaimed that it had already benefited DU of exception clause by granting the permission to offer LLB to 1440 students instead of 900 students.
Amidst of all this, the court questioned that why the Bar Council haven’t inspected the Law Faculty despite of the fact that the inspection fee has already been paid by DU. So, the Court told BCI that if the fee has been paid accordingly then it should follow the rules chronologically and carry out the inspection.
The Court has taken the matter forward and settled a date for the next hearing.
So, On June 12, The BCI needs to give appropriate reasons for not considering DU’s claims regarding exceeding the number of seats from 1440 to 2310 for Law Faculty as students are getting so enthusiastic each year to get into Law Faculty which raises the no. of applications each year.
Eventually, The Court allowed the University to advertise for admission to 1,440 seats for its law course. That number, the Court said, would be subject to the final outcome of a plea demanding a surge to 2,310 seats.
