HC refuses to entertain plea to form panel to check feasibility of 4-year law course instead of 5-yr

New Delhi: The Delhi High Court on Thursday refused to entertain a plea seeking a direction to the Centre to constitute a legal education commission to ascertain the feasibility of a four-year law course after Class 12, instead of the existing five-year course.

The high court said since it is not within the judiciary's domain, it is not inclined to interfere in the matter.

"This is not in our domain. We do not design courses. We are not going to get into this. You cannot run down the five-year law course like this. If you want to give representation to them (authorities), you are free to do that. The matter is closed at our end," a bench of Acting Chief Justice Manmohan and Justice Manmeet P S Arora said.

As the bench indicated that it was going to dismiss the plea, petitioner Ashwini Kumar Upadhyay, a lawyer, sought liberty to withdraw it and the request was allowed by the court.

The petition had sought a direction to the Centre to constitute a legal education commission, like the Medical Education Commission, comprising retired judges, law professors and lawyers to ascertain the feasibility of a four-year bachelor of law course like the four-year B.Tech course.

In the alternative, the petitioner had urged the court to direct the Bar Council of India (BCI) to form an expert committee of retired judges, jurists and educationists to examine the coherence of the five-year bachelor of law course with the National Education Policy, 2020.

The BCI's counsel submitted that the petitioner had earlier filed a similar plea before the Supreme Court and after the apex court refused to entertain it, he approached the high court.

When the petitioner said law students are being made to study subjects like sociology, history and economics, which are not required, Justice Manmohan said these subjects are very much relevant and law students must study those.

"If one has to practise law, he has to dabble in everything. He has to do income-tax cases also. How can you say economics does not have a role? We do all these GST and other matters every day. I wish I had studied economics. It would have helped in understanding these cases better. Engineering is also important. Now, people are doing engineering with law," Justice Manmohan said.

The court also said there was a "certain bit of lack of knowledge" on the petitioner's part that had led to the filing of the petition.

The petitioner said earlier, there was a three-year law course and cited the example of former law minister Ram Jethmalani and eminent jurist and former attorney general late Fali Nariman, saying they started practising law at the age of just 17 and 21 years respectively.

To this, the bench said, "Let us tell you, their education never came to an end. How much they have read even at that age. They were continuously reading and updating themselves. Nobody does that." The plea said if there is a need for a five-year bachelor of law course, only subjects related to law should be taught.

"NLU, Nagpur conducts 50 examinations in five years. Out of these, only 33 are law-related examinations and the rest 17 irrelevant examinations, that is, economics, sociology, history, political science, English and other optional subjects. English, though may seem to be relevant, is not the onus of the college.

"This shows that law-related subjects can be taught in three years or a maximum of four years. This also shows that irrelevant subjects are taught to extend the duration of the course and extract money. The fees should not be taken during internship months as the colleges play absolutely no role in it. The student has to find the lawyer, pay for his or her own conveyance and pay the college for it," the plea said.