Delhi University’s Law Faculty aspirants whose admission has been delayed due to Bar Council of India’s decision to scrap 1,400 seats out of 2,300 from the college, protested outside the BCI office on Wednesday.
BCI chairman Manan Kumar Mishra told the students that unless Law Faculty recruits new teachers, ensures a student-teacher ratio of 40:1 and constructs a new building for the 1,400 seats, their decision will remain.
He also said that evening shift students will not be given a passing certificate from the college if they working, and they want a certificate only to add on to their resume.
There were 50 aspirants who had gathered for the protest demanding re-evaluation of BCI’s decision to scrap seats from this academic year. BCI is the authority that controls the legal education in India.
The protest was led by All India Student’s Association. Aman Nawaz, DU president AISA, said, many people couldn’t turn out today because most of them are based outside Delhi. Another protest will be organised on Thursday so that more students from Rajasthan and Meerut and other nearby places can come.
“Students from outside Delhi also started an online petition on Facebook in support of the agitation. Some of them have claimed that they will join the protest on Thursday, said Nawaz.
“Three law centres –Law Centre-1, Campus Law Centre (CLC) and Law Centre –II in Law Faculty, were proposed to be set up in a new building located at Chhatra Marg, in north campus and near the present Law Faculty. The new building is ready but the building didn’t pass BCI’s inspection,” said Ved Kumari, teacher in LC1.
“Administration has recently sent photographs of 40:1 teacher student ratio in class while teaching, to the BCI to convince them of the class decorum,” said Kumari.
Kawalpreet Kaur, one of the aspirants outside BCI office, said, “We were not informed by DU about this situation, we came to know about the scrapping of seats through the newspaper. Many people still might not know about this.”
Kaur, 22, applied in three colleges and claims to have cleared the entrance of all three, ILS Law College, Pune, Government Law College Mumbai and Law Faculty
DU.
Since, her rank was 860 for Law Faculty, she was certain that she will get through, so she did not take admission in the other colleges.
But now she cannot take admission in the other two colleges as their admission have closed. “Neither is DU answerable to us neither is BCI,” said Kaur.
On the other hand, Rohan Kathpalia, an alumini of Law Faculty, who passed out this year said that the teacher student ratio in class is 70:1 and it has been tough because the infrastructure is poor.
He added, “This is a pan-DU problem and not only related to Law Faculty.”
In January, the council had communicated to the university to shutdown colleges offering law courses in evening shifts.