COVID-19 Crisis: Except Final Year, BCI To Promote All Law Students

New Delhi: Amidst the ongoing Coronavirus pandemic, the Bar Council of India (BCI) has decided that all law students will be promoted on the basis of internal assessment and the previous year’s performance. This does not include final year students.

Keeping an eye on the current situation, the BCI has released new instructions and guidelines regarding the criteria of law exams and the promotion of law students to the next year.

The guidelines stated that after educational institutions reopen, it may conduct the end semester exams for the year from which the students have been promoted, inside a sensible timeframe. However, these promoted students will keep on concentrating on the academic studies in the year to which they have been advanced.

“In case, they are unable to pass/clear any paper of the end semester exam of the year from which they have been promoted, they will have to clear it before they are granted the degree. Those who have been promoted to the final year as LL.B students will have to pass all the papers to obtain their degree/s,” the lawyers’ body was quoted as saying to News18 .

BCI in a statement said, “Final year LL.B students, who have not cleared all the papers of the previous years and are required to sit in the supplementary examination, but have been promoted to final year, will be allowed to write a project report or appear in an online examination so that they can also pass within time.”

The lawyers’ body explained that for LL.B last year students, the colleges may select another strategy of their choice, which they feel is sufficient to fulfil the necessities of a regular examination.

A senior official of the lawyers’ body said, “Under this system, the university may allow students to write a project report/research paper for each paper of the final year or they may adopt a foolproof method to double the internal marks of the semester exams already held for such a year.”

The BCI said universities must follow the guidelines of social distancing, campus and classroom sanitisation set by the central government. “The safety and health of the students should not be compromised at any cost. Universities are instructed to maintain the highest academic standards while conducting the examinations,” the statement said.