Supreme Court tags PIL for reviewing 5-year law courses with pending plea

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Friday ordered clubbing of a PIL seeking formation of a legal education commission or an expert committee to review five-year law courses in the country with a pending case.

A bench of Justices Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta, which refused to issue notice in the matter, agreed to hear the plea along with the other similar petition. "You want us to direct the government to frame a policy. We will tag this. Not issue notice," the bench told senior advocate Vikas Singh, representing the petitioner.

The plea filed by Ashwini Kumar Upadhyay said the New Education Policy 2020 promotes four years of graduation courses in all professional and academic courses but there were no steps undertaken by the Bar Council of India to review the existing syllabus, curriculum and the duration of the Bachelor of Law (LLB) and Mater of Laws (LLM) courses.

The PIL said the five-year duration of the BA-LLB and BBA-LLB courses was "disproportionate to the course material" and the long duration put an excessive financial burden on students.