The Supreme Court has sought response from the Union government, the Bar Council of India (BCI), the University Grants Commission (UGC) and the Law Commission of India on a public interest litigation (PIL) seeking establishment of a legal education commission.
The Apex Court passed the order on a petition filed by Advocate Ashwini Kumar Upadhyay, seeking the constitution of an expert committee comprising eminent educationists, jurists, retired judges and professors to review the curriculum, syllabus and duration of the LLB and LLM programmes across the country.
The petitioner noted that the current five-year integrated law courses (BA-LLB/BBA-LLB) were excessively long and inconsistent with the objectives of the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, which promoted flexibility, shorter graduation pathways and interdisciplinarity. They were also financially burdensome for students belonging to economically weaker sections, it added.
Advocate Upadhyay said the national law universities (NLUs) conducted up to 50 exams in five years across the country, of which only about 32 were core legal subjects. The inclusion of unrelated subjects such as sociology, political science and economics in law degrees unnecessarily inflated the duration and cost of legal education, dissuading talented students from pursuing law, it added.
The top court of the country issued notice to the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Law & Justice, UGC and Law Commission, along with the BCI, which regulated legal education in the country.