HC seeks DU, BCI stand on allowing detained law students take sem exam

The Delhi High Court today sought response of the Delhi University and Bar Council of India (BCI) on a PIL for allowing students detained by the varsity due to lack of attendance, to sit for their ongoing semester examinations.

A bench of Justices S Ravindra Bhat and A K Chawla issued notice to DU and the apex lawyers' body BCI, and sought their stand on the allegation made in the petition that classes in three centres of the Law Faculty were not held according to the legal education rules framed by the Bar Council.

In the plea filed on behalf of the detained law students, advocate Tarun Narang claimed that DU Law Faculty's three centres -- Campus Law Centre (CLC), Law Centre 1 (LC1) and Law Centre 2 (LC2) -- have arbitrarily, illegally and without issuing any show-cause notice detained hundreds of law students.

 

The petition also contended that the law faculty never conducted any classes in any of its law centres for five hours continuously as was required under the BCI rules of legal education.

"Thus, the students did not get the attendance of these missed lectures in the aggregate total attendance because of the negligence of the dean of the Faculty of Law in following the above mentioned rules," the plea said.

It also claimed that the law faculty never included the moot court exercises, tutorials etc. in the time-tables as was required under the rules.

"By not conducting the moot court classes/ tutorials since the commencement of the semester/session which were supposed to happen as per the said rules, the law faculty did not give the opportunity to the students to include the attendance of moot courts/ tutorials/ project work per week in their aggregate attendance, and this is one of the reasons of their detention," the petition said.

Narang said in his plea that according to the BCI rules, there were to be 465 classes of one hour duration each in Law Centre 2.

However, according to the time table of LC2, only 312 classes were held and according to the detention lists, 245-250 was the actual number, he claimed in his petition.

The numbers were similar for various sections and semesters in LC1 also, the plea said.

The petition has also claimed that "the attendance lists were not declared on time in either of the three centres of legal education".