The Bar Council of India (BCI) has conveyed to the Delhi High Court (HC) that conducting the Common Law Admission Test (CLAT) exam in languages apart from English would expand opportunities for citizens to engage in the test and pursue a legal career, reports PTI.
The apex bar body shared this stance in an affidavit in response to a PIL seeking CLAT-2024 to be conducted not just in English but also in regional languages. Supporting petitioner Sudhanshu Pathak, a law student at Delhi University (DU), the BCI expressed its backing for the cause.
The CLAT, organised by the Consortium of National Law Universities, is typically conducted in English and is scheduled to take place in December 2023.
The petitioner, in his PIL, has said CLAT (UG) examination "discriminates" and fails to provide a "level playing field" to students whose educational backgrounds are rooted in regional languages.
The BCI's affidavit said, "Bar Council of India supports the issue raised by the petitioner for conducting the CLAT examination in languages other than English as the same will give opportunities to more citizens of the country to appear in the exam and pursue law as a career.”
The BCI, in its response, said according to the Legal Education Rules, English has to be the medium of instruction in both the integrated five-year and three-year law courses, but it is open to the institution to allow instruction in any language other than English.
If the medium of instruction of legal education is other than English, students have to take English as a compulsory paper, it added.
The BCI also noted that the All India Bar Examination is held in various languages, including English, Hindi, and regional languages.
The Consortium of National Law Universities earlier stated that implementing additional language options for CLAT-2024 this year, without proper deliberation and studies, could lead to administrative and operational issues. They've formed an expert committee to examine the possibility of offering CLAT in additional languages, with the committee's findings shaping future preparations.
The committee held its first meeting on June 25 and framed certain issues relating to the subject matter, it said.
The petitioner has contended that "in a hyper-competitive paper, they (students from non-English language background) are linguistically disempowered as they have to surpass the additional hurdle of learning and mastering a new language".
The petitioner was represented through senior advocate Jayant Mehta and lawyers Akash Vajpai and Sakshi Raghav.
