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Islamabad: The Pakistan Bar Council (PBC) has stopped the Federal Urdu University of Arts, Science and Technology from offering legal education programmes on Islamabad and Karachi campuses for being unrecognised.
The development came during a meeting of the PBC Legal Education Committee, which took place here with its chief, Shoaib Shaheen, in the chair.
Established under the Legal Practitioners and Bar Councils Act, 1973, the PBC is the highest elected body of lawyers in the country. Besides others, a major task of the PBC is also to promote legal education and prescribe standards of such education in consultation with universities and provincial bar councils, and recognise universities, whose law degree will be a qualification for enrolment as an advocate. The PBC Legal Education Committee took notice of the LLB, LLM and PhD courses offered by the FUUAST on its Islamabad and Karachi Gulshan-i-Iqbal campuses in violation of the PBC (Recognition of Universities) Rules 2005 and asked the university to close the programmes forthwith.
It warned if its directives weren’t complied with, the law graduates of the university won’t be enrolled with any bar council as advocates on the basis of their degrees. Also, the committee allowed the Bahria University, Islamabad, campus, and Benazir Bhutto Shaheed University, Lyari, Karachi, to begin the LLB and LLM classes respectively after the hiring of qualified teachers and establishment of modern, well-equipped libraries.