The Hindu : Tamil Nadu News : Three-year, five-year courses revived in Chennai law college

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, May 25, 2004

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu

Three-year, five-year courses revived in Chennai law college

By A. Subramani

CHENNAI, MAY 24. Two academic years after abolishing regular three-year and five-year law courses at Dr. Ambedkar Government Law College here, the Government revived both the programmes this year.

The move comes after the government lost two rounds of litigation in the Madras High Court and the Supreme Court. The High Court, after allowing a batch of public interest litigation petitions in September 2002, directed the government to restore the courses. When it preferred an appeal, the apex court in January 2004 said the two courses "should be continued until further orders, subject to the approval by the Bar Council." Last month, the apex court reiterated its direction, rejecting a clarification petition filed by the government.

The government launched an elite, five-year Bachelor of Law (Honours) in Tamil Nadu Dr. Ambedkar Law University, and located one batch of students on the college premises in 2002. Shortly afterwards, the regular three-year and five-year courses were `discontinued' in the college owing to `space constraint.'

Today, the government released an admission notification inviting applications for six government law colleges, including the one in Chennai, and 50 per cent of the total seats available in the Central Law College at Salem, only private law college in the State.

During the pendency of the cases, the seats available in the Chennai Law College were redistributed to other colleges and a new college - Tamil Nadu Dr. Ambedkar Law University Law College - was started at Chengalpattu. Now, officials contacted by The Hindu could not clarify whether the seats taken away from the Chennai college and redistributed to other colleges alone would be restored here or the seats vested with the Chennai college this year would be considered an additional intake.

Unlike the admission notification of other professional courses, the Law University never publishes the total number of seats available in colleges. When contacted, an official would only say the university's job was to conduct an entrance examination. Details such as the break-up of seats in each college were beyond his jurisdiction, he said. There is no word whether students from northern Tamil Nadu, accommodated in other law colleges during the past two academic years, would be rehabilitated in Chennai itself, now that the courses are being revived here. As per the present schedule, the applications will be issued from May 28. The last date for submitting the filled-in forms is June 14. The entrance examination for the three-year and five-year law courses will be held on July 3 July 4.

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