The Bar Council of India (BCI) — which regulates legal education and legal profession in India — has withdrawn the three-year moratorium on starting new law colleges across the country, the Supreme Court has been informed.During hearing of a petition filed by Vocational Education Foundation Society challenging the 2025 notification imposing a three-year moratorium on starting new law colleges, BCI counsel Radhika Gautam told a Bench of Justice Vikram Nath and Justice Sandeep Mehta on Monday that the moratorium had been withdrawn.In view of the BCI’s submission, the top court disposed of the petition and allowed the petitioner to apply for 2025-26 session.Besides the Vocational Education Foundation Society, one Jatin Sharma had also challenged the BCI’s moratorium on starting new law colleges.The petitioners had challenged the Rules of Legal Education, Moratorium (Three-Year Moratorium), with respect to Centres of Legal Education, 2025, on the ground that the blanket moratorium was arbitrary, disproportionate and violative of Articles 14 (right to equality), 19(1)(g) (to practice any profession, or to carry on any occupation, trade or business) and 21 (right to livelihood) of the Constitution.The CBI’s decision deprived deserving aspirants of the access to legal education and penalised educational institutions which otherwise fulfilled criteria for starting law courses.The establishment of new law colleges should be encouraged in aspirational, tribal, and underserved districts in order to reduce regional disparities in access to legal education, the petitioners contended.The BCI had brought in the impugned rules, saying it was aimed at curbing unchecked mushrooming of substandard institutions and safeguarding the integrity of legal education.Taking cognisance of mushrooming of law colleges across India, the BCI imposed a three-year moratorium on opening of institutions – except national law universities, if proposed by a state.In a press release issued on August 13 last year, the BCI also said during the three-year period no existing Centre of Legal Education will be permitted to introduce new sections, courses or batches without prior approval of the Council. The BCI said it would lay stress on the improvement of standard of existing institutions and that the ones without any proper infrastructure or faculty would be closed down in three years.The petitioners, however, contended that instead of a uniform freeze, there should be targeted, transparent and region-specific regulatory measures to address substandard institutions and that genuine proposals for new law colleges should be entertained.