Thousands of law students who did their LL.B two years ago from various public and private law colleges, are still waiting to get back their hefty Law-GAT fees from National Testing Service (NTS) as the tests were not conducted.
Back then, due to lack of communication and internal rifts between Pakistan Bar Council and provincial bar associations, the Pakistan Bar Council (PBC) assigned National Testing Service (NTS) the responsibility to conduct Law Graduate Assessment Test (Law-GAT) which was made mandatory for all law graduates. Interestingly, Pakistan Bar Council in its haste did not take into confident the Punjab Bar Council about its decision and resultantly, many writ petitions were submitted to Lahore High Court by law graduates and advocates alike and eventually, Punjab Bar Council decided to conduct its own enrollment examination.
The fee for NTS Law-GAT was Rs 3,000 per candidate for a single MCQs paper three times more than the fees for enrollment test conducted by Punjab Bar Council. Although, the NTS grabbed fees from thousands of law students, the test was never conducted as Punjab Bar Council decided to conduct its own enrollment exams.
‘Not only we’ve lost Rs 3,000 but also we got our district court licenses after a delay of five months due to the tug-of-war between NTS and Punjab Bar Council. Recently, Lahore High Court has announced seats for civil judges, but because our licenses were delivered late we couldn’t fulfill the 2 year condition necessary to appear in the exams,’ said Advocate Chaudhry Faizan who has also sent legal notice to NTS and plans to initiate civil action soon.
At present, the provincial bar councils namely Punjab Bar Council, Balochistan Bar Council, and KPK Bar Council are conducting their own enrollment exams for lower courts. Only law graduates from Sindh appear in NTS Law-GAT. Despite repeated attempts to contact National Testing Service, no one was available for comments.
