NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Tuesday grilled the Bar Council of India for “interfering in academic affairs of law colleges” and said the task should be left with academicians.A bench of Justices Surya Kant and N Kotiswar Singh was hearing pleas challenging the BCI’s 2021 decision to scrap the one-year LLM course in the country and de-recognise foreign LLMs.”Why are you interfering in academic affairs? Why should BCI decide the curriculum, etc., of law colleges. Some academic expert should take of these things. In this country, there is a very big class of lawyers. You have an onerous statutory responsibility of updating their knowledge and organising training programmes for them,” the bench said.The top court added, “You can have training on the art of drafting, understanding case laws, etc., and it should be part of your statutory responsibility. The curriculum has to be entrusted to the academicians.” When senior advocate Vivek Tankha, appearing for the BCI, said it was the “existing system”, the bench remarked, “You (BCI) have imposed yourself and claiming you are the only authority in this country.” Tankha revealed a committee of stakeholders headed by a former chief justice of India was set up to examine and recommend a framework to equate one-year and two-year LLM degrees.
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