Bar Council’s Direction For Semester Exams

MATTER IN ISSUE:

• A law student challenged the Directions issued by the Bar Council of India for conducting intermediate examinations and the circulars notified by the Karnataka State Law University in so far as it imposed an examination on intermediate semester law students.

• The petition was filed in the Karnataka High Court by a 3rd year law student namely RitvikBalanagraj B, a studentat St. Joseph’s College of Law, Bengaluru.

• A single judge bench of Justice Krishna S Dixit was hearing the plea.

• The petitioner has filed a Public Interest Litigation earlier, which was dismissed by a Division Bench on ground that the reliefs sought were in private or personal interest rather than in public interest.

ARGUMENTS BY THE PETITIONER

• The examination will have a disproportionate and adverse impact on the students who were unable to attend classes in online mode for various reasons like accessibility, remote locality, and affordability. They would effectively be compelled to write examinations on subjects which they were never taught and that will have a disparate impact on these students and will impose an extra burden on such individuals who were already marginalized, and violate Art.14

• Due to the sudden shutdown of colleges, the students have lost access to libraries and have come back home without any study material in their hand. The students had a legitimate expectation from the university that they would be taught the subjects, given access to study material and then they would be evaluated. If an examination is conducted bypassing this process that would breach this legitimate expectation.

SUBMISSIONS BY THE PETITIONER'S COUNSEL

• The petition was filed through four advocates namely Arnav Bagalwadi, ShathabishShivanna, Abhishek Janardhan and H.C. Prateek.

• It stated that the circular issued by BCI and KSLU are inconsistent with UGC guideline of April 2019, UGC Revised Guidelines dated 6.07.2020 and the government of Karnataka order dated 10.07.2020.

• The above-mentioned documents mandated all the universities in the state of Karnataka to evaluate its intermediate semester students under an evaluation formula, where 50% weightage would be in internal evaluation and 50 % weightage would be in marks scored in previous semester. The law students of KSLU are equally affected by the pandemic and they are also similarly circumstanced.

PRAYER SOUGH BY PETITIONER

• The petition prays for quashing the circular dated 09.11.2020 and Press Release dated 01.11.2020 as being illegal and void to the extent that they deviate from the guidelines issued by the Universities Grants Commission and impose an examination on Intermediate semester Law Students of all Law Universities across India, including the Law Universities that are affiliated with KSLU, for the semester of 2019-2020 academic year.

• Further, the plea seeks a prayer to quash the Guidelines dated 27.05.2020 and Press Release dated 09.06.2020 issued by Respondent No.1(Bar Council of India) as being illegal and void and to direct Karnataka State Law University to give effect to the government of Karnataka order dated 10.07.2020 which is in line with the UGC Guidelines on Examinations and Academic Calendar for the Universities in view of Covid-19 Pandemic and Subsequent Lockdown.

DECISION OF THE COURT

• The High Court of Karnataka issued a notice to the Bar Council of India, Karnataka State Law University and the State government dated 9h December, 2020.

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