Law admissions: 13,000 seats up for grabs in fourth round

MUMBAI: As law admissions enter the fourth and final round on Thursday, around 60% seats in colleges across the state are still up for grabs. According to the state’s

MUMBAI: As law admissions enter the fourth and final round on Thursday, around 60% seats in colleges across the state are still up for grabs. According to the state’s CET Cell, after the third round of admissions, 13,000 of the 22,000 seats available for the three-year and five-year LLB courses are still vacant.

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The data indicates that most of the students had frozen their admissions after the first round itself, despite having a choice to float their allotted seat and move to the next round for a better college. Data shows that there were no takers for around 9,000 seats, even though 30,000 students had taken the law CET this year.

According to a CET Cell official, most of the students had opted for a few coveted colleges, many of them located in the city, leaving seats in other institutes vacant. The official also said that many students were unable to secure admission so far due to erroneous applications.

However, Sunita Khariwal, principal of KC College of Law, Churchgate, said that the low enrolment was the result of the uncertainty and confusion over the issue of the Bar Council of India’s (BCI’s) approval to colleges. BCI, which is the top regulatory body for legal education, had withheld the approvals to half of the law colleges in the state for violating its norms. It decided to grant them approvals on September 13, after they paid the fine and met the BCI’s conditions. But the admissions had already begun on September 3.

Many students said they were unable to find a seat in a college of choice due to “errors” in allotment lists and confusion over the admission process. “I couldn’t get a seat in the third round, but an aspirant, who had scored less than me in the CET, got a seat in a college I wanted,” said Haresh Tambe, an aspirant.

Dhrumil Sanghvi, another aspirant, alleged that his rank was changed in the third list.

The fourth round will give those, who didn’t register earlier, a chance to do so.