New Delhi: The Bar Council of India (BCI) has decided to end the system of granting permanent approval to law colleges and instead will be introducing a system wherein all law colleges in the country will have to seek approval from the council on an annual basis.

BCI has taken this decision due to the continually falling standards of law education in the country. Now, all 850 law colleges in the country will have to seek approval every year to teach law courses.

The decision was taken on September 4 during a meeting of the Legal Education Committee of the BCI, which is headed by former Supreme Court judge A.P. Mishra.

According to the Advocates Act, it is necessary for a person to have studied in a law college that has been approved by the BCI to be eligible for practicing law as a profession.

A member of the Legal Education Committee said that BCI has now taken a strict stance while dealing with all law institutes that do not have the faculty that meets the BCI regulations.

BCI had found out in several cases of examining documents and records submitted by law colleges that certain teachers did not meet the necessary requirements to teach the subject that they were found to be dealing with. For example, a teacher who had a PhD in Hindi was found to be teaching economics.

In order to make its system of granting approval to institutes to teach law courses more transparent, BCI has taken another decision to direct all law colleges to apply for the approval via filling a detailed form on BCI's official website.

Some features of the application form that would help in gauging the eligibility of a law college for being granted approval includes a 45 minute video of a lecture being conducted at the institute that is applying for the approval, each and every detail of the faculty members, infrastructure and well as the number of students that are currently enrolled at the institute for law courses.

The deadline for applying for approval of law colleges will be fixed after BCI finalizes the suitable format of the detailed application form.