The Bar Council of India (BCI) told Delhi High Court that conducting the Common Law Admission Test (CLAT) in languages besides English would offer opportunities to more people to take the exam and pursue law as a career.
Organised by the Consortium of National Law Universities, CLAT is conducted in English and is scheduled to take place in December 2023.
The BCI stated its stance in an affidavit as a reply to a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) seeking the conduct of CLAT in other regional languages apart from English, reported Indian Express.
BCI, in its affidavit, stated, “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 Bar Council of India has also extended its support to the Petitioner Sudhanshu Pathak, a law student at Delhi University who raised the issue, the report added.
In the PIL, the petitioner stated that CLAT (UG) examination “discriminates” and failed to provide a “level playing field” to the students who come from regional educational backgrounds.
BCI, in its response, said that as per the Legal Education Rules, the medium of instruction has to be English in both five-year and three-year law courses, however, it is open to the institution to allow instruction in any language besides English, reported Indian Express.
It further stated that if the medium of instruction in legal education is any language other than English, then the students have to take English as a compulsory paper.
All India Bar Examination (AIBE) is conducted in 23 languages in English, Hindi and other regional languages.
The Consortium of National Law Universities earlier informed the High Court that the preparations for the upcoming CLAT 2024 are in the advanced stage and the introduction of additional languages without any contemplation would lead to serious administrative and operational issues.
The consortium has further stated that it has formed an expert committee of vice-chancellors of five-member NLUs to study the issue of offering the CLAT in additional languages besides English.
The expert committee will prepare a thorough roadmap after assessing stakeholders’ views and likely restraints.
The consortium added that the expert committee’s report will allow for making necessary advanced preparations and removing any likely issues for conducting CLAT in regional languages.
The committee conducted its first meeting on June 25 and formulated certain issues relating to the subject matter.
According to the petitioner’s contention in an extremely competitive paper, students from a non-English language background will be “linguistically disempowered” as they have to transcend the additional barrier to learning and mastering a new language.
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