The Bar Council of India (BCI), the top regulator for legal education in the country, has directed centers of legal education (CLEs) to update their curricula in line with the new criminal laws enacted in July this year, as the Ministry of Law and Justice informed the Lok Sabha in a written statement on Friday.
The BCI sent a communication to CLEs, which include national law universities and private law colleges nationwide, instructing them to train students in the new criminal laws, which were passed by Parliament in late 2023 and came into effect on 1 July.
These three new criminal laws—the Bharatiya Nyay Sanhita (BNS), Bharatiya Nyay (Suraksha) Sanhita (BNSS), and the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam (BSA)—have replaced the Indian Penal Code, the Code of Criminal Procedure, and the Evidence Act, respectively. The BNS outlines punishments for crimes, the BNSS describes prosecution procedures, and the BSA details evidence gathering processes.
The new laws have been revised to incorporate the use of technology in criminal prosecution, among other changes. For example, the police can now record crime scenes using video technology under these new laws.
In May, the BCI urged all CLEs to revise their curriculum to include these new criminal laws, emphasizing emerging fields like blockchain, electronic discovery, cybersecurity, robotics, artificial intelligence, and bioethics.
The BCI also required universities and colleges to incorporate training in mediation, an out-of-court dispute resolution method, into the legal curriculum, according to the letter.
Although alternative dispute resolution has long been a compulsory subject in law schools nationwide, the focus has traditionally been on arbitration through lectures on the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, with less emphasis on mediation, as noted by law students.
The central government passed the Mediation Act in 2023 and is expected to establish the Mediation Council of India to outline the rules of procedure for mediation proceedings by the end of this year, as reported by Mint in June.
Additionally, the BCI has instructed CLEs to implement bilingual methods of instruction to make legal education more accessible across different regions of the country.
The BCI conducts surprise inspections at CLEs to ensure compliance with legal education standards and penalizes institutions that do not adhere to these rules. As per information on its website, the BCI has barred seven institutions from admitting new students for the 2024-25 academic year and beyond until further notice.
