In what could be music to the ears of students aspiring to pursue law in Chennai, the Madras High Court on Thursday said, it expected the State government to find a suitable place within the city limits, and as close as possible to the High Court, for the Chennai Dr. Ambedkar Government Law College.
First Division Bench of Chief Justice Sanjay V. Gangapurwala and Justice D. Bharatha Chakravarthy wondered how the campuses of a college whose very name begins with the word Chennai could be functioning from Pattarai Perambudur in Tiruvallur district and Pudupakkam in Chengalpattu district.
The judges agreed with advocate N.G.R. Prasad that the students would be at a disadvantage because of their inability to attend the court proceedings regularly, listen to frequent lectures from senior counsel and take up part-time work at law firms while pursuing their masters course due to the distance factor.
The Chief Justice also expressed concern over a metropolitan city such as Chennai not having a government law college at all ever since the Chennai Dr. Ambedkar Government Law College, popularly known as Madras Law College, for over a century, was bifurcated and shifted to Tiruvallur and Chengalpattu districts in 2018.
Originally, the Madras Law College was functioning from a heritage building located inside the Madras High Court campus. However, the building suffered damages in 2015 due to the Metro Rail project and was declared unsafe, necessitating the shifting of the institution elsewhere, until the completion of the repair works.
However, in 2017 and 2018, the students filed a batch of writ petitions in the High Court complaining about the distance that they had to travel to reach the two new campuses and the lack of facilities there. The High Court issued a slew of directions to the government to provide infrastructure and transportation facilities.
In the meantime, since the heritage building, that once housed the law college, had been repaired and handed over to the High Court, Mr. Prasad insisted that the government law college should be established back in Chennai city so that the students get to benefit from being in close proximity to the court complex.
Agreeing with him, the Chief Justice said, legal education had undergone a paradigm change over the years and now it was all about gaining practical experience and interactions. He said, the law students would stand to gain if they get to study close to the court complexes in the city.
He also pointed that a multi-storey building to be built, near the High Court campus, would house as many as 160 trial courts. The city civil courts, sessions courts and family courts functioning on the High Court campus would be shifted there after the construction.
Justice Chakravarthy said, there might have arisen a situation that compelled the shifting of the government law college to the outskirts of the city in 2018. However, now it could be brought back to the city in the larger interest of the students, he said.
The Division Bench directed Government Pleader A. Edwin Prabakar to get instructions from the State government, on the possibility of finding a suitable place for the law college within the city limits, by April 25.
