Vice-president of India Dr Ansari inaugurated the new GNLU campus in Gandhinagar on January 7.
"The legal profession should be a helping and caring one, and not a selfish and exploitative one", said Dr. Hamid Ansari, India's Vice-President who inaugurated the new campus of the Gujarat National Law University (GNLU) at Kudasan in Gandhinagar on Saturday.
Dr. Ansari, who is on a two-day visit to the state, said, "The grooming of young students here is the guiding light for their careers as lawyers and judges. It is here that one should be made to realise that the legal profession should be a helping and caring one and not a selfish or exploitive one."
Dr. Ansari spoke about the issue of delay in justice delivery system in the country and ethics in the lawyer fraternity. He also put forward a few questions about the changing role of lawyers in reference to "Basic Principles on the Role of Lawyers," adopted by the Eighth UN Congress on the Prevention of Crime and Treatment of Offenders at Havana in September, 1990.
"Can we speak of a justice delivery system when the process takes two or three decades to reach finality?” Dr. Ansari asked while addressing the audience which consisted of state ministers, high court judges, legal luminaries and law students.
"Reasons for delays in justice delivery system are well known. Excessive adjournments are the primary cause, other reasons being shortage of resources and capacity, long winded arguments by counsels, inadequate judge strength, delay in filling up vacancies and disproportionate concentration of work among some members of the bar," he said.
Quoting a report of Law Commission of India, he said, "Report No.230 of August, 2009 has presciently noted that 'the ethics of lawyers has also become questionable. Though there is a bar council that has to look after ethics of lawyers, it has rarely taken action against tainted lawyers."
Meanwhile, CM Narendra Modi mooted an idea that law students can serve the society like doctors who have compulsory internship in government hospital or rural areas. "Law students should serve society by not entering into corporate practice after their degrees," Modi said.
By saying that lawyers have played a vital role in the independence struggle and building of the country, the CM said, "Lawyers should come forward to serve society and reignite the pre-independence era when most of the top freedom fighters were barristers."
GNLU has been shifted from Sector-26 to a sprawling campus at Kudasan village near Pandit Deendayal Petroleum University. The new campus is named Attalika Avenue, the Sanskrit word meaning nest of knowledge light.
The land was gifted by the state government and the campus is spread over 50 acres in which students across the nation will got education in various wings of the law. GNLU's director Dr. Bimal Patel delivered the welcome address while Dr. Shrimati Kamla, the governor of Gujarat, also remained present on the occasion.
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