The Bar Council of India has issued an advisory to all Centres of Legal Education to be considerate in charging fees from the students pertaining to the COVID-19 pandemic situation.
Manan Kumar Mishra, Chairman, BCI, in response to the requests received from students all over the country has issued such advisory to all the institutions providing Legal Education to be flexible in their fee struture, i.e. to accept fees in easy installments, waive off certain component of the fees such as infrastructure fee, library fee and other facilities.
The reason served being no apparent use of such facilities due to the ongoing pandemic. The Circular mentions that how not only students but their parents too have pleaded for the same.
It has been contended that in such severe times when people have been laid off from their jobs, faced salary cuts, businesses loose out on profits, reasonable concession should be offered to them to allow them to tide over the difficulty.
Therefore, in view of the above, the BCI has asked all the Centres for Legal Education to be considerate and compassionate to the hardships being faced by students and has advised them to form flexible alternate schemes so that students can pay off their fees in easy installments rather in lumpsum which will be a big deal to them considering the unprecedented harsh situation.
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Reminding institutions of their savings on infrastructure, the BCI has asked to adjust things for students as they have incurred due costs in availing online education such as cost of internet connection, laptop/devices etc.
The students have stated that the cut off dates for paying fees will de bar them from availing online education which will result in great mental agony apart from the loss of opportunity to have access to Legal Education.
The BCI has called it as a Special Emergency Situation and stated that students wouldn’t have made such plea under normal situation and thus being the regulator of the Legal Education, it has issued the above advisory.
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Inter alia, BCI has asked the Centres to be sympathetic towards individual cases of hardhsips of students and lend helping hand without imposing penalty or debarring them from access to online education.
Read Circular Here:
