legal education
The Delhi High Court has rejected the third bail application of Bar Council of India (BCI) member Rajinder Singh Rana, who with two other lawyers is accused of taking a bribe to accredit a law college.
The court held that bar council members were “public servants” and the Prevention of Corruption Act would apply, also agreeing with the CBI’s argument that Rana’s influential status would hamper investigations if released on bail.
Read on for the full allegations, evidence and chronology of events, according to court documents.
Law minister Veerappa Moily said the government had finished a Bill to set up a new National Commission for Higher Legal Education and Research, which would replace the BCI as the regulatory body responsible for legal education, recognition of law colleges and a unified law school curriculum.
Nalsar Hyderabad has proposed a regular full-time course for paralegals to widen the scope of legal education to include non-LLB professionals for imparting functions of mediators, conciliators, negotiators and counsellors.
Exclusive: The Supreme Court today allowed the Bar Council of India’s (BCI) transfer petition clubbing together six high court writ petitions challenging the all India bar examination (AIBE) but declined to hear the exam’s constitutional validity just now citing its postponement to March next year.
The Bar Council of India (BCI) has published the pro-forma undertaking that 2010 graduates will need sign before practising, agreeing to take and pass the bar exam in future.
Latest update: All 2010 law graduates may be able to practise law subject to giving an undertaking they would clear the all-India bar exam within two years, according to a bar council source.
In an unexpected turn the all India bar examination (AIBE) transfer petition may now be scheduled for hearing by a division bench on or after 29 November according to one authoritative source, with completion of the summoning process making way for adjudication on merits.
An email from the BCI has confirmed that the bar exam date has been “pushed” and that the body would make a formal statement on 25 November.
State bar councils are planning to hold regional bar exams for each state, as the holding of the all India bar exam has turned into a political circus between the Bar Council of India (BCI), its chairman and the state bar councils. Meanwhile, the BCI will meet in Chennai this weekend (20 November), probably without BCI chairman Gopal Subramanium.
The Aurangabad student respondents' counsel in the bar exam Supreme Court transfer petition decided against a second mentioning of an interim stay application after having been declined once before by the Chief’s court, as the Chamber judge is likely to take up the matter for non-prosecution after three months in line with standard procedural practices in the apex court.
The Punjab and Haryana High Court has again deferred the bar exam writ petition hearing today to 1 December citing inability to take up the matter in view of the ongoing Supreme Court proceedings and transfer petition.
Exclusive: The Supreme Court may have set the stage for the next round of proceedings in the All India Bar Exam challenges after completing the summoning process but certainty has continued to elude thousands of law graduates, as only two out of six anti-exam petitioners are still in active pursuit of the case while the other four have become absentee litigants for most intents and purposes.
The Bar Council of India (BCI) has extended the All India Bar Exam registration date, which elapsed last Sunday, by another 15 days to 15 November as the exam is still scheduled to be held on 5 December.
Jindal Global Law School (JGLS) and its parent body have taken the first steps to entering into a more formal collaboration with US Ivy League college Yale University.
Hastened by the impending Diwali court holidays and the 31 October deadline to apply for the bar exam, the petitions against the exam in the Supreme Court momentarily picked up speed this week.
An application for stay of the Bar Exam was unsuccessful in the Supreme Court today as the registrar referred the Bar Council of India’s (BCI) failure to serve notices on respondents to a chamber judge, although no substantive hearing will now be possible before the Diwali court vacations end on 8 November.
Today’s hearing in the All India Bar Examination (AIBE) matter has been postponed by one more day following an inadvertent administrative delay in sending the case files from the Supreme Court Registry to the registrar’s court.
Exclusive: England & Wales’ Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) has approved India to be included in its list of jurisdictions of foreign lawyers permitted to take the new Qualified Lawyers Transfer Scheme (QLTS), following a delay of six weeks following an administrative oversight.
A day before the Supreme Court hearing in the All India Bar Exam (AIBE), over 80,000 lawyers from 240 bar associations of the Madhya Pradesh State Bar Council have gone on a one-day token strike today to protest the exam, which they say is “unconstitutional” and causes unnecessary hardship on students.
The Punjab and Haryana High Court has reaffirmed and upheld the Supreme Court’s jurisdiction in the adjudication of the impending writ petitions against the All India Bar Examination (AIBE) citing the apex court’s earlier decision to combine and hear the matter as transfer petition titled Bar Council of India vs Babubhai Vaghela & Ors.