Maharashtra: Law colleges fear two first-year batches in 2021

With admissions to first-year law courses in both three-year and five-year courses still underway, colleges are now worried that they will end up with two first-year batches in 2021, leaving them unable to handle the same. MU suggests extra lectures to complete curriculum.

At a time when colleges are gearing up for summer session examinations, first-year law students are only now beginning their academic year. With admissions to first-year law courses in both three-year and five-year courses still underway, colleges are now worried that they will end up with two first-year batches in 2021, leaving them unable to handle the same.

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“As per the recent announcement by the examination department of the University of Mumbai (MU), first-semester law exams are scheduled to take place in the second week of June, so the second semester exams will only take place in September or October, by when the next academic year admissions will begin. How are colleges supposed to handle two different first-year batches at the same time?” asked the principal of a suburban law institute.

He added that this fear is affecting teachers who have been working non-stop since September last year, when MU asked colleges to start online lectures. “Last year, they started work with second- to fifth-year law students, now they’ll start lectures for first-year batches and also conduct two rounds of examinations between May and June 2021. And by the time the first-year batch is ready to graduate, the next academic year will begin,” he said.

Admissions to most professional courses were delayed by a few months this year, first due to the lockdown and then due to a petition filed in the Bombay high court for clarity on the status of the Maratha quota. In December, the registration process for most professional courses including law, engineering, architecture and pharmacy had to be delayed by a few weeks to give students time to make necessary changes to their admission form after the state government decided to continue admissions without the inclusion of the Socially and Educationally Backward Classes (SEBC) quota.

After much delay, the first lists of the three-year and five-year law courses were scheduled to be released in the first week of February, but the same had to be postponed again after the state common entrance test (CET) cell received complaints of error in student information. At present, the institutional round of admissions is underway and law colleges will start regular lectures soon.

While the university has declared dates of commencement of exams, the department has also asked teachers to conduct extra lectures to complete the curriculum. “Law is a course which needs to be taught at length. And since classes are being conducted online, we’ve requested teachers to conduct extra classes on weekdays and weekends to ensure that students are not at a loss of academic time,” said AK Singh, dean, law department at MU.

He further added that due to the fallout of delay in the 2020-21 academic year, it is likely that admissions to the next academic year could also get delayed. “Hopefully colleges will not need to face the problem of two first-year batches studying together,” added Singh.

Meanwhile, Students Law Council has approached the vice-chancellor and director of examinations and evaluation of MU, requesting them to allow the 2020-21 first-year law students to study and appear for exams together with the 2021-22 batch. “This way, students as well as teachers will get time to breath, and there will be no need for repetition of syllabus in the same year,” said Sachin Pawar, president of the council.