Indore: The University Grants Commission (UGC) is entertaining thoughts of reducing two-year master degree programme in law to one year. “A high-level committee constituted by the UGC to examine the proposal making the LLM course one year has submitted its report.
The report favours the idea. The UGC is likely to cut down the period of LLM course to one year from next academic sessions,” Government Law College Prof Nirmal Pagaria told Free Press. At present, a student has to study for minimum seven years after Class XII to get a masters degree in law. And for pursuing LLM alone, it takes two years. The idea to reduce duration of LLM course first came up during a meeting on legal reforms chaired by Union HRD Minister Kapil Sibal two years ago.
With the minister backing the idea, the UGC had set up an expert committee led by the founding vice-chancellor of National Law School of India University, Bangalore NR Madhava Menon and handed over it a proposal to condense the LLM course. The committee was asked to examine the proposal and it recently endorsed the move and submitted its report to theUGC. “For implementing the one-year course, universities will have to modify their syllabus of LLM programme,” Pagariya said. The Menon committee also recommended that an all-India test be held annually to select students for one-year LLM.
