Daily Times

LAHORE: The Lahore High Court has directed all public sector law colleges in Punjab to refresh the admission criteria for the bachelor of laws (LLB) programme within one month.

A full bench held that the age limit alone is no barrier to enrolment in five-year and three-year LLB programmes. It also held that if candidates for the LLB programme have completed their BA then they could be considered for the three-year programme regardless of their age.

Furthermore, it said that any person of 24 years or above is provisionally eligible for a five-year LLB programme, regardless of whether they hold a BA degree or not.

The bench observed that the five-year LLB programme syllabus approved by Pakistan Bar Council and adopted by the Punjab University would be followed in all provincial universities.

The bench issued the directions while hearing a number of petitions moved by students who had been denied admissions to a law programme on the basis of not meeting the minimum age limit of 24 years. It further observed that the universities would reconsider the number of seats to be allocated to the respective college as per the affiliation rules and the university calendar.

It held that the 100 seats prescribed under the Pakistan Bar Council Legal Education Rules 2015 would not be put into operation until a final decision on the submitted petitions was given. In the meanwhile, it said, the seats already granted to the affiliated colleges would be utilised for both three-year and five-year law programmes.

The court further observed that as per the legal education rules and the notifications issued by the respective universities, evening classes would not be allowed while any admissions granted above the number of allocated seats were in violation of these orders and thus could be reconsidered.

The court also constituted a ‘law colleges commission’ headed by advocate general Punjab, which included one representative each from the Pakistan Bar Council and Punjab Bar Council as well as a commissioner or district coordination officer and a district police chief.

It directed the commission to carry out a physical inspection of the law colleges to verify whether they complied with the requirements for affiliation. It also tasked them with preparing a list of institutions imparting legal education without having any affiliation by January 17, 2017.A