Not all of us are aware about the goof ups and confusions that created a chaos amongst the law aspirants and college administration as well whilst the entrance and admission for 3 year and 5 year integrated LLB courses in 2016.
Well, to begin 2016 was the year that marked the centralization of law admissions in India through Common Entrance Tests for both 3 year and five year LLB courses. This announcement itself created whirlwinds in the law education sector causing considerable chaos, litigation and delays and further resulted into many aspirants being denied admission inspite of seat availability. Speaking of numbers, the CET data sheet reveals that out of the 15000 seats available for 3 year LLB degree course, 5000 remained vacant and out of the 10,000 seats available for 5 year integrated LLB degree course, 6000 remained vacant.
Here is an overview of the muddle that happened in 2016 with respect to the CET of Law that resulted in the Principals of Law colleges coming together to make proposals with respect to simplification of law admission procedures.
Applications – The application form apparently needed the students to choose from a list of college division rather than list of colleges. This created a lot of confusion amongst the students and many of them ended up choosing only one division instead of all. This in turn resulted in them losing the seat.
Age Bar – This was one of the biggest issues that cropped up during admission and let to the denial of admission to many aspirants. Apparently, the age limit for the 3 Year LLB course is 30 (35 for reserved category) years and 5 year integrated LLB course is 20 years ( 22 for Reserved category). Though its challenged in the court through may petitions, the imposition of it last year cost many students their seats.
Seat Allocation & BCI Approval – Adding to the confusions already on with CET were that of the seat allocation issue, where in the BCI had to make changes in the first and the fourth list of allotments of colleges due to conflicts reports. There were problems with the ladies and minority quota fulfillment as well. Further, to add to it the apex body had already put a stay on approval of 64 colleges out of 128 in the state until the criteria put forth by BCI were accepted by the colleges.
Nationality/ Caste Certificates and CET Notification Issues – There was last minute chaos while submission of the application forms as many of the aspirants weren’t aware that they had to furnish the nationality and caste certificates. In another case, a student filed a petition in the high court for cancellation of the test on the ground that the syllabus of the test has to be announced 6 months prior to the commencement of the test. Though, the court did not entertain that petition it did direct the state to include BCI member while outlining the syllabus.
Considering these issues that ultimately resulted in significant delays in admission, Principals of law colleges have proposed the need of setting up of facilitation centres to the government of Maharashtra in order to simplify the law admission process this year. The objective behind setting up such centres is primarily assisting the law aspirants and students undertaking the Common entrance test for Law with application form filling, documents to be furnished, etc. Further, they also proposed that a standard operating procedure (SOP) be put in place, so as to avoid the unnecessary last minute hassles the students have to go through for compliance and more. The principals harped upon the simplification of the admission procedure so has to avoid confusions, misunderstandings and unnecessary delays.