12 LLB Aspirants Approach High Court Against Panjab University’s Decision To Scrap Entrance Test

Chandigarh: Twelve LLB aspirants have approached the Punjab and Haryana High Court against Panjab University’s (PU) decision to scrap the entrance test for admissions to BA LLB and BCom LLB courses this year.

Keeping in view the country’s pandemic situation, PU had decided to conduct admission based on marks obtained in Class XII.

However, after being issued a notice by the high court, the counsel for PU has sought time to obtain instructions on the matter, as per The Indian Express report.

The PU counsel on Monday submitted before the bench of Justices S Muralidhar and Avneesh Jhingan that he needs time to obtain instructions on whether the entrance exams are being held by PU for the three-year law course. The HC scheduled the hearing of the matter for September 1.

Background:
In July 2020, PU published a prospectus on its official website and invited applications for admissions to PU BA/B Com LLB (Hons), a five-year integrated course — by way of holding an entrance test. Prospective applicants applied for the course following all instructions mentioned in the brochure-cum-prospectus issued by the university.

However, on August 11, 2020, PU scrapped the UG law entrance test due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Now admission to these courses was based on marks scored by the candidates in Class XII exams.

Now 12 petitioners from different states have argued before the HC through counsel Deepak Vashisht that the PU decision is only arbitrary in nature but also against the will of natural justice and thus liable to be set aside.

The petitioners pleaded that the CLAT (Common Law Admission Test) exam 2020 for all national law universities has been rescheduled given the COVID-19 situation. Moreover, they are rescheduling the exam for September 7, for PG and UG programmes.

According to the petitioners, PU can also go in for the same arrangement for conducting the entrance exam as done by the authorities to conduct the CLAT exam throughout the country.

The petition also mentioned that the Bar Council of India has also issued a letter, dated May 27, 2020, to all vice-chancellors of universities that final-year students of three and five-year courses may be allowed to appear in online examinations. However, the universities must adopt an alternative strategy for conducting examinations for those students who are unable to avail the option of online examinations.