Supreme Court Justice SA Bobde, presiding over a bench with Justice L Nageswara Rao, told the Bar Council of India (BCI) today that it should reconsider the undergraduate law degree age limit of 20 years that it had foisted unexpectedly on law aspirants late last year.
Senior counsel Kapil Sibal was leading with senior counsel Sanjay Hegde for the three petitioners including one orphan and Increasing Diversity by Increasing Access (IDIA) scholar, whose cases we had first reported on 6 February. Advocate on record was Zoheb Hossain.
Bobde told the BCI in court today, according to Hossain: “Please reconsider it, because the consumers of legal education have approached us, and you are the body which is supposed to [regulate] legal education in this country.
“Why don’t you consider their request, and let’s hear it next Tuesday?”
The next hearing is scheduled for Tuesday (28 February).
The new bench of Bobde and Rao had been constituted after Justice Dipak Misra had mysteriously recused himself from hearing the petition, possibly because of having formerly worked on a high court bench with the father of the BCI lawyer.
The age limit had already been on the ropes after both the Allahabad high court and the Bombay high court had stayed its application to aspirant petitioners before it.
However, the Allahabad high court had expressly noted that its decision was subject to the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court needs to sort out the confusion in particular since there is a conflicting Madras high court judgment, meaning that the application of the Allahabad and Bombay high court decisions could be limited only to students in each respective state.
Comments
The facts re CLAT and NLU-D and HPNLU are pretty simple and static: they are possibly in violation of the Supreme Court directive. But until someone calls them out on it in court, it's mostly academic.
Re the BCI, it's a different story: we are generally reporting new facts relating to AIBE, age limit, etc, which means we can keep reporting on it and pointing out their illegality.
I don't think many of us would like a residential college atmosphere amd living amongst 18 year olds after spending time in the real world. Unless NLUs give the flexibility of living off-campus, on one's own terms, few would truly wish to live in such an atmosphere. I love the freedom GLC affords me, and I'd rather complete a 3 year course than spend 2 out of 5 years learning basic economics and sociology.
Of course, those who wish to apply for such a course should be welcome to do so. Age limits are ridiculous.