The Supreme Court has disposed of a writ petition challenging the three-year moratorium on the establishment of new law colleges after the Bar Council of India (BCI) informed the Court that it had withdrawn the impugned notification.
The Bench of Justice Vikram Nath and Justice Sandeep Mehta on Monday disposed of the petition filed by the Vocational Education Foundation Society on the grounds that the substantive challenge to the moratorium no longer survived for adjudication.
The petitioner was granted liberty to apply afresh for approval to commence BA-LLB (five-year) and LLB (three-year) programmes for the academic session 2025-26, in accordance with the extant statutory framework and the Rules of Legal Education framed under the Advocates Act, 1961.
The writ petition had challenged the Rules of Legal Education (three-year moratorium) with respect to the Centres of Legal Education, 2025, as notified BCI on August 13, 2025. The impugned rules imposed a blanket prohibition on the establishment of new law institutions nationwide for a period of three years.
The petitioner contended that the moratorium was ultra vires the Advocates Act, 1961, which, under Sections 7 and 49, empowered the BCI to prescribe standards of legal education. However, the Act did not authorise the imposition of a complete embargo on new entrants.
The petitioner argued that such a prohibition constituted an unreasonable restriction on the right to practice any profession or carry on any occupation under Article 19 (1) (g), failing to satisfy the test of proportionality embedded in Article 19 (6).
The plea further invoked Article 14, alleging manifest arbitrariness and overbreadth, on the ground that the moratorium did not differentiate between non-compliant institutions and those that had already secured infrastructure, affiliation and inspection approvals.
Reliance was placed on the decision of the Punjab and Haryana High Court in Chandigarh Education Society v. Bar Council of India, wherein a similar three-year moratorium had been struck down as unconstitutional. It was also noted that the validity of the 2025 moratorium was under consideration in Jatin Sharma v. Bar Council of India, where notice had earlier been issued by the Supreme Court.
Apart from challenging the vires of the notification, the petitioner alleged that BCI had failed to operationalise its online portal, thereby preventing submission of applications prior to the imposition of the moratorium.
It was contended that the rules provided an exemption for pending applications; however, due to the Council’s inaction in issuing login credentials, the petitioner was unable to file its proposal and consequently lost the benefit of the exemption.
The institution claimed to have secured requisite land, infrastructure, and a No Objection Certificate (NOC) from Chaudhary Charan Singh University, along with affiliation following inspection. It asserted compliance with all statutory prerequisites and maintained that the moratorium, coupled with administrative inaction, amounted to hostile discrimination.
The Bench refused to address the constitutional questions raised in the plea and disposed it as infructuous, restoring the regulatory position to that prevailing prior to the August 13, 2025 notification.
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