Calling for reforms in the role of the Bar Council of India (BCI), a Parliamentary panel report said that the apex legal education regulator should be restricted to granting “basic eligibility for practising at the Bar”. The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Personnel, Public Grievances, Law And Justice panel, headed by Sushil Kumar Modi, tabled its report titled “Strengthening Legal Education in View of Emerging Challenges Before The Legal Profession” in the Rajya Sabha. Calling for measures to give priority to “quality over quantity”, it said: “Many stakeholders have also raised serious concern about the manner in which the BCI has used the power to inspect law colleges and grant them recognition which has led to a reckless proliferation of substandard law colleges in the country.” The BCI, the panel said, does not have “power nor expertise” to make the desired changes in legal education and recommended an “independent authority” for postgraduate legal programmes to make them relevant beyond courtrooms. “Accordingly, the Committee recommends that the BCI's powers to regulate legal education should be limited to the extent of acquiring basic eligibility for practising at the Bar,” it added. The panel recommended a “National Council for Legal Education and Research” under the proposed Higher Education Commission of India (HECI). The HECI Bill, yet to be introduced in Parliament, will not have medical and law colleges under its ambit. The panel also called for a uniform curriculum to replace the existing practice of adopting different syllabus prescribed by the affiliating universities by law colleges. “This creates unevenness among the law students… The committee, therefore, recommends that the role of BCI should be redefined and the uniform curriculum should be laid by the BCI for undergraduate courses in all the law colleges/universities,” the panel said. The panel observed that premier law colleges have not implemented quota for SCs, STs and OBCs in undergraduate and postgraduate courses especially in all-India seats, and recommended that BCI consider withdrawing recognition if NLUs and other colleges fail to implement it.
