Bar Council of India (BCI), has termed the protest as successful and thanked advocates throughout the country. According to BCI a meeting has been called by the ministry of HRD to discuss the issue on 23rd January in this regard.

Bar Council of India (BCI), opposing any superseding regulator through Higher Education and Research Bill 2011, has suspended recognition of 60 Law Colleges, imparting legal education in the country in the recent time. These institutions faced ire of the BCI as they were not following set standard of the legal education in the country. In conversation with fachcha.com, Ashok K. Parija, Chairman, BCI, said that these institutions belong to all states including Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Rajsthan, UP and many others.

BCI itself took step to check the irregularities by such institutions in the country. We have National Law School, Bangalore, an institution of international repute and other 14 such institutions in the country, governed by rules and regulations of the BCI, said Parija. Giving detail of the Legal Education Committee of BCI he said that it is a professional body consists of top legal luminaries. The committee is headed by a retired Judge of Supreme Court of India and sitting Chief Justice of a High Court, a distinguish professor of Law, Union Law Secretary, UGC Chairman and five elected members of the Bar Council of India, the Attorney General of India and the Solicitor General of India are its member. According to him BCI has expanded the committee by nominating permanent invitees from the eminent senior advocates like Ram Jethmalani, Ashok Desai H, KK Venugopal, Gopal Subramanium and many others.

There are over 15 lakh legal professionals in the country. They have been educated in legal institutions, regulated by BCI for over 60 years, said Parija adding that BCI had not receive any grant for its works.

Strong opposition has been made by the BCI’s Chairman Ashok K. Parija today in this regard and said that the HRD Ministry is trying to put a regulator of few people on the BCI’s legal study committee, responsible for professional acumen in legal studies and general legal education in the country. The committee is headed by a retired justice of Supreme Court and comprises of sitting Chief Justice of a High Court, UGC Chairman, Law Secretary, top legal professional and five members of BCI. But the proposed new body, comprises of only seven members, including four part time and one chairman, will not only look into affairs related to legal education but also hundreds of universities and educational institutions and various courses. This is not acceptable to BCI, said Parija.

He also alleged that government had been trying to hit federal structure of the country through the bill as the power of recruitment of Vice Chancellors of the universities would be the purview of the new body according to the bill. It is notable that the bill has been introduce aiming to bring all sectors of higher education under one umbrella abolishing bodies like UGC, AICTE and other regulators.

The BCI has given a call for protest day on 20th January. According to Parija lawyers throughout the country will abstain from the courts in protest of bill and inclusion of the legal studies. It is notable that a representation of BCI called on Union Law Minister Salman Khurshid yesterday. Thereafter the BCI has moved ahead with the protest plan.

The LL.B. course is available for Campus Law Centre and other Law Centres of the university while LL.M. is available at the main centre only. The legal education at Delhi University is considered among one of the best in the country.

The decision has been taken in the Union Cabinet meeting today. According to the official communication the Bill will bring the internet edition of the newspapers under the purview of Act.

The Act would be known as Press and Registration of Books and Publications (PRBP) Act, 2010 and newspapers, magazines, journals, publications will be defined in the present context.

The Act is 143 year old and enforced in 1867. The bill will also limit foreign investment in the sector and make publishers to file their annual statement compulsory.

The AIBE will be conducted in nine languages across 27 cities in India.

The BCI will provide preparatory materials for the examination to all candidates. Interested candidates may contact State Bar Councils and BCI in this regard. They can also apply online for the AIBE through www.barcouncilofindia.org.

The last date for submission of application forms is October 31,2010.

Law and Justice Minister M. Veerappa Moily moved the bill after withdrawing its earlier version, the Representation of the People (Amendment) Bill, 2006. The older version of the bill was withdrawn on the recommendations of a parliamentary standing committee which examined the legislation.

“The new bill is more comprehensive and it will enable the NRIs to participate in the democratic process of the country,” the law minister said introducing the bill.

(IANS)

A decision to this effect was taken at a brain-storming session of AIMPLB in New Delhi earlier this month.

Among others, the meeting was attended by union Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal as well as Minister of State for Minority Affairs Salman Khurshid.

Maulana Rasheed, who also heads Lucknow’s oldest Islamic seminary popularly known as “Firangi Mahal”, said: “The new education board would be empowered to grant affiliation to both religious and non-religious educational institutions.”

“The idea behind setting up such a board is to ensure uniform national curriculum in madrassas and other Islamic educational institutions across the country,” he said.

According to Maulana Rasheed: “The proposed education board would also devise schemes and programmes to promote literacy among Muslim women too.”

A committee has been constituted to prepare a blue-print for the proposed education board.

Among its members are Central Law University, Vidhisha, Vice Chancellor Faizan K. Mustafa, former Uttar Pradesh Minorities Commission chairman S.M.A. Kazmi, retired high court judge Fakhruddin, leading educationist E.A. Inamdar and Supreme Court advocate Niaz Farooqui. (IANS)

The University Grants Commission (UGC) alone has the statutory power to grant the status of deemed university to an institution and revoke it and these functions of the commission cannot be outsourced to a review panel, the universities said.

“The function of the UGC could not be usurped by a committee set up outside the act (UGC Act, 1956)”, senior counsel K.K. Venugopal, appearing for the universities, said before an apex court bench of Justice Dalveer Bhandari and Justice Deepak Verma.

The senior counsel said the government could not appoint a committee to decide the fate of the deemed universities. He said the government’s action infringed upon the scope of the UGC Act.

He said that P.N. Tandon, who headed the review committee which gave a report suggesting derecognition of some deemed universities, was himself a head of the National Brain Research Centre that was established by the department of biotechnology in Haryana in 1997 and enjoyed the status of a deemed university.

Venugopal told the apex court that Tandon could not have gone into the fate of the similarly placed institutions.

The senior counsel even questioned the procedure and methodology adopted by the Tandon committee.

He said that the recognition granted by the UGC could not be revoked by the human resource development ministry on the recommendation of Tandon committee.

Venugopal appeared for some of the 44 institutions which are threatened with the prospects of losing their deemed university status.

Earlier, Solicitor General Gopal Subramanium told the court that the power to revoke the deemed university status was inherent in the power to grant such a status.

He said that there need not be any specific provision under the statute permitting the power to derecognise the deemed university status.

The solicitor general said that the fundamental question was whether a committee be appointed to go into the working of deemed universities, collect material and act on it.

He said it involved the question whether there was justified and sufficient material and whether principle of natural justice including issuance of show cause were followed before revoking the deemed university status of an institution.

Subramanium said that all these questions needed to be answered before taking on merit the question of each of the institutions facing prospect of derecognition.

The Tandon committee’s recommendation last year to derecognise the petitioner universities was accepted by the government in principal.

The court was hearing a matter related to a public interest litigation questioning the quality of educational facilities in deemed universities. (IANS)

On July 26, the apex court asked the ministry to produce an army notification that makes women ineligible for permanent commission in the regular army.

The court direction came during the hearing on an appeal filed by the army against a verdict of the high court in which it was directed to extend permanent commission to women officer in the regular army.

The Indian Air Force has already granted permanent commission to women.

The ministry took the stand that a notification issued in pursuance of Section 12 of the Army Act, 1950 excluded women from getting permanent commission in the regular army.

On the face of it, the notification appeared to be in breach of constitutional provisions guaranteeing equality before law but it was not so, the ministry told the court.

Additional Solicitor General Parag Tripathi told the apex court that Section 12 of the Army Act was protected by constitutional provisions that permitted certain restrictions on employment in defence services.

Article 33 of the constitution empowers parliament to modify the fundamental rights conferred on the citizens, he claimed.

On Tripathi’s submission, the court said these objections should have been raised at the threshold challenging the maintainability of the petition before the high court.

Counsel for respondent Babita Puniya said there was not even a whisper of these objections before the high court.
(IANS)