HT Correspondent
SIVASAGAR, March 21: A group of residents in the historical Sivasagar town struggled a lot through many difficult years to see the birth of the first institute of professional education, the Sivasagar Law College in 1972. Affiliated to the Dibrugarh University, it grew from scratch to a healthy college under the guidance of some dedicated persons like Advocate Amulya Barua, Advocate Prafulla Baruah, Advocate Jogen Dutta, Prof Radha Baruah, Advocate Ahsanuddin Bora, and a few others. The college provided law education to a large number of aspirants who are now engaged in diverse fields. But with the change of educational policy, the Bar Council of India withdrew recognition of the college in 2001 citing non-fulfillment of certain prerequisites. The governing body of the college could not fulfill all those conditions as it required a huge amount of money. The present two-storey building in the centrally located 1 bigha and 10 lochas of land was insufficient for the project- the Council informed the committee.
Dr. Hemanta Phukan, the present secretary of the committee told this correspondent that the government has been making significant contributions in setting up infrastructure for professional education in the state, but the Sivasagar Law College has somehow fallen on a blind spot. He said that he along with Dr. Ratneswar Deori, the president of the committee, went to the Rajya Sabha MP umpteen times requesting his help in this regard, but he did nothing in this regard. Besides, the Bar Council stressed some conditions that were hard enough for a venture college to fulfill, such as over Rs 10 lakh in fixed-deposit in banks, specific classroom sizes, libraries with huge book stock, etc. The college since then had to wind up its regular LLB classes much to the distress of the students of the entire district and vacant the college campus in Amolapatty Chariali was later given on lease to the Sankardev Sishu Niketan for holding its regular classes.
Related Posts:
Arabinda Baruah, a member of the committee said that the hapless governing body of the college approached the DoNER Ministry in 2016 with a project of Rs 3,36,37,000 under the NLCPC scheme through the then Chief Engineer, PWD, but no action was taken in this regard in the last five years.
However, the committee, along with several prominent personalities of the town, urged chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma and Education minister Ranoj Pegu to help the institution to grow and fulfill the aspirations of pupils seeking law education.
