The Bar Council Of India’s (BCI) absurd proposal to start conducting an all-India level mandatory ‘entrance exam’ – which all qualified lawyers will have to pass in order to start practicing law – has understandably met with large protests across the country. The BCI is trying to justify this exam (called the ‘All India Bar Examination’ AIBE) by claiming that the existing poor quality of the legal profession has to be ‘enhanced’, and therefore an exam is required to ensure that all practicing lawyers confirm to some basic standards.
Whether it is law, medicine, engineering or any other profession, the quality of higher education in this country has steadily been compromised primarily by the state-sponsored policies of commercialization and privatization. Private colleges and universities are mushrooming all over the country, practically offering degrees for sale. These so-called ‘educational institutes’ more often that not lack even basic infrastructure or a well-qualified faculty, while charging exorbitant fees.
Rather than taking strict measures to curb these education shops, the BCI wants to further punish students (who have already borne the brunt of privatization) for the ills of privatization by rendering their degrees useless! Nothing can be more bizarre and illogical. The only outcome of this policy will be to restrict the legal profession to the elite – it will act as an effective barrier preventing students from deprived backgrounds from practicing law and pursuing a decent career.
If the BCI has no confidence in the degrees offered by some law colleges, no confidence in the abilities of students who have been certified to be eligible by these colleges, then this raises serious questions of the efficacy of our regulatory systems. Why is no action being taken on these colleges to improve their infrastructure and facilities?
The BCI has in the past too tried to restrict the conditions for enrollment as an advocate. At that point, the Supreme Court explicitly overruled the BCI and disallowed it from adding any conditionality for enrolment (beyond section 24 of the Advocates Act). Therefore, this latest move to introduce passing in the AIBE as a precondition for practicing law is essentially an underhand method of achieving the same end of restricting the legal practice to a select, elite few. Enrolment in the BCI without the right to practice is meaningless – it will only result in those students who have not passed the AIBE being exploited and made to work on practically no wages, even though they are qualified lawyers.
More disturbingly, the task of conducting the AIBE has been entrusted to a private firm (called Rainmaker). Who will now be responsible for the uncorrupt, transparent functioning and efficacy of the entrance exam, when the state has washed its hands off the whole affair?
AISA has already launched an agitation against the AIBE. Students studying in law colleges in Salem, Chenglepet, Chennai and Coimbatore participated in a protest at the Tamil Nadu Bar Council office in Chennai. Many students were arrested by the police, though they were later released. Earlier AISA students in Davangere (in Karnataka) had also protested against the decision to hold the AIBE. In continuation with these agitations, 3rd December 2010 will be observed by AISA as the National protest day against AIBE.
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