Bar Council of India cracks the whip on 10 Karnataka law colleges

After deemed universities, it is now the turn of law colleges in the state to face the ‘de-recognition’ scare.

Citing poor academic standards, the Bar Council of India (BCI) has decided to de-recognise 10 law colleges in Karnataka.

The Legal Education Committee of the BCI has taken this decision after considering the reports submitted by its various teams, which conducted inspections at various levels.

In all, the BCI has de-recognised 30 such colleges across the country and issued showcause notices to 20. Ten of these colleges are in Karnataka.

According to information available with the Karnataka State Law University (KSLU), Hubli, four of these 10 colleges are government law colleges.

“Also, most of the colleges have started functioning recently and have failed to meet the BCI requirements,” said JS Patil, vice-chancellor, KSLU.

However, those studying currently in these colleges need not worry. BCI officials said that the existing students would not be disturbed and students who were already pursuing courses could go ahead and complete their graduation from the same institution.

The committee headed by former Supreme Court judge, justice AP Misra, had conducted a review study in all the 900 legal educational institutions in the country, judging them on the above mentioned criteria.

Meanwhile, the KSLU is trying to convince the BCI officials to give the de-recognised institutes at least a year’s time to improve their standards. Regarding this, the law department has written to the university and requested it to correspond about the same with the BCI.