Students who had graduated from School of Excellence in Law (SOEL), run by Tamil Nadu Dr. Ambedkar Law University, will also be eligible for government stipend of Rs.3,000 a month for first two years of their practice if their family income is less than Rs.2.5 lakh per annum, the Madras High Court has held.
Chief Justice Sanjib Banerjee and Justice Senthilkumar Ramamoorthy agreed with public interest litigant M. Karpagam, represented by her counsel R. Prabhakaran, that graduates from the SOEL could not be denied stipend just because the institution collects annual fees of Rs.80,000.
The quantum of tuition fee paid by a candidate to obtain a Bachelor’s degree in law would be of no relevance as long as a candidate seeking the stipend fulfils all conditions mentioned in a Government Order issued on June 30, 2020, the Bench said. It pointed out that the GO does not specifically exclude SOEL students.
It, however, lists out a series of eligibility criteria for claiming stipend. The criteria states that the applicants must be law graduates, they must have studied in a government institution, they must have enrolled with the Bar Council, must produce affidavits from senior advocates every six months to prove their active practice, they must not be above 30 years age, must be residents of Tamil Nadu, their family income must be below Rs.2.5 lakh and so on.
The GO, nowhere, states that SOEL students would be ineligible for the stipend and it had not been disputed that SOEL was a government institution. Therefore, students of such institution could not be denied stipend if any of them meets the eligibility criteria as mentioned in the GO, the court held.
