The Bar Council of India (BCI) has notified that “universities, centres and law schools should conduct examination for intermediate and final-year law students as per their discretion, depending upon the availability of resources and the impact of COVID-19 in that region.” As a result, the universities, centres of legal education, and law schools will now independently choose their mode of examination from options like online, offline, blended, assignment-based evaluation (ABE), online open book exam (OBE), and research papers.
However, the council has also clarified that the end-term examinations must be mandatorily held by all the law school/universities for awarding an LLB degree and promoting to the next year.
In addition, the recent press release of BCI mentions that “The Committee also recommended that the Universities/Centers of Legal Education should ensure that sufficient time gap exists between regular and backlog examinations to avoid inconvenience to the students.”
Universities to Conduct LLB Examinations Depending Upon the COVID-19 Situation in Their Region
The LLB exam guidelines 2020 issued by the BCI were challenged by the court, after which the council took the decision to not provide any uniform set of instructions related to the conduct of intermediate and final year LLB exams this year.
Keeping in consideration that the COVID-19 situation may vary in different areas and regions, the BCI has given a free-hand to the universities to hold the intermediate and final-year law exams as per their own discretion.
The BCI had previously formed a high-level committee to deliberate upon crucial issues like mode of intermediate semester examination, evaluation and promotion of intermediate LLB students in view of the COVID-19 pandemic, and evaluation of the mode of examination before issuance of degree to the final-year law students.
Therefore, BCI’s recent notification for the law institutions across the country is based on the committee’s recommendation of allowing the universities to conduct the examinations based on the availability of resources and COVID-19 situation in their respective areas.
