The government of Tamil Nadu has relaxed the norms regarding the establishment of the new self-financing private law colleges in the state. As per the reports, earlier the permission was granted only if the management of the college was able to find a stipulated land of 4 acres to 10 acres within the radius of 15 km of the session or the district court.
The norms were revised recently due to the difficulty encountered while finding the land parcels for the inception of the new law colleges. The relaxed rule stated that permission can be issued even if the land lies between the radius of 30 km of the sessional or district court. The state law department issued an order on 19 February 2020 in this regard by making amendments to the Tamil Nadu Establishment of the Private Law Colleges Rules (Regulation) 2018. It is known that till 2014 Tamil Nadu had the blanket ban on the private law schools. In 2018, a new rule regarding opening up of law education to private sectors came into existence.
After the new rule came into action, the private institutes in the field of law escalated from one in the year 2014 to 14 at present. It is also to be noted that Tamil Nadu state has the highest number of private law colleges in South India. Although in the nation, states like Gujarat, Maharashtra, Rajasthan and Haryana have more private law colleges than Tamil Nadu.
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Former Zonal Secretary of AUT working at an NLS (National Law School) based on Trichy, Mr Raja, said that further privatisation would highly impact the quality of the judicial profession. He further added that there is not much scope for the law graduates to get employed in the private sector. The Vice-Chairman of BCI (Bar Council of India), S Prabakaran, said that the BCI recently imposed a 3 Years moratorium on the approval of the new law colleges across the nation and it shall be relaxed only on the direction of the courts.
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Courts have expressed disappointment on the opening of multiple private law universities. In order to maintain the good health of the legal education system of India, the number of law colleges needs to be brought down.