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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Lawyers’ strike against education super-regulator by Samanwaya Rautray

Lawyers’ strike against education super-regulator by Samanwaya Rautray

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published Published on Jan 10, 2012   modified Modified on Jan 10, 2012

The Bar Council of India (BCI) today announced that lawyers throughout the country would stay off court work on January 20 as a mark of protest against the new education super-regulator proposed by the central government.

At a media conference here, chairperson Ashok K. Parija said the BCI had asked all state bar councils to register their protest in ways they “thought fit” but added that most had decided to “abstain from court work”.

At the root of the controversy is the Higher Education and Research Bill, 2011, which seeks to set up an overarching national body to regulate all streams of higher, vocational, technical and professional education, except medicine and agriculture.

However, the proposed National Commission for Higher Education and Research (NCHER) will frame guidelines on research in medicine.

The law ministry sees the legislation — tabled in the Rajya Sabha on December 28 — as an attempt by the human resource ministry to impose the regulator on it. Under the existing system, the BCI deals with legal education and professional standards under the Advocates Act, 1961.

Lawyers fear the proposed super-regulator, expected to subsume regulatory bodies in higher education such as the UGC and the All India Council of Technical Education, would erode the independence of the bar and eventually of the judicial system. “We will not accept this bill in any form,” Parija said.

The proposed regulator will comprise a chairperson and six members, who will be appointed by the President on the recommendation of a search-cum-selection committee headed by the Prime Minister.

The search panel would also include the leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha and the Union ministers in charge of medical education and higher education.

Parija said the BCI, which recognises legal professionals throughout the country, had objected time and again to its parent ministry, the law ministry, to the proposals but its concerns were not heeded. He said the council would submit a memorandum to law minister Salman Khurshid. The minister, he added, has assured them of a sympathetic hearing.

Parija claimed the bar council recognises a law college only after the state university concerned had granted it affiliation, and said the BCI’s legal education committee was more broad-based than the one proposed in the education bill.

The BCI chairperson said the proposed committee would include bureaucrats and academics, according to the bill’s provisions, whereas the bar council committee had senior advocates as well as distinguished judges. “Which one is better?” he asked.

Parija dismissed suggestions that the BCI lacked the credibility to deal with the problems and challenges facing the legal fraternity, saying it had revamped its inspections teams to check mushrooming of law colleges and falling standards.

The Telegraph, 10 January, 2012, http://www.telegraphindia.com/1120110/jsp/nation/story_14986240.jsp


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