With three new laws enforced earlier this month, the first-year students will have a drastically different curriculum than their seniors — probably in a first. The overlap between new and old laws, however, is expected to make the transition smoother for older students, suggest some teachers.

The students starting their second year from August 1 at Delhi University’s Faculty of Law, like their seniors, studied the colonial era laws — the Indian Penal Code (IPC), CrPC (Code of Criminal Procedure), and the Indian Evidence Act (IEA) in their first year. The freshers this year, however, will have a tryst with the three new laws that replace them — the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS), and the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam (BSA).

Anxiety among students is palpable. “I am anxious about the transition phase of leaving the law school and going into practice. The sections are different in new laws, and we will have to constantly go back and forth to refer to them since we never got the chance to study them in college,” says Tanvir, a second-year student.

“Other than that, we are also anxious about the exams that we will sit for after completing our degree. We are not sure where the questions in those exams will come from. They could come from the old Acts or the new ones,” he adds.

Abhishek, another second-year student, says, “The major difficulty that we will face is to learn all the sections afresh in the new laws.”

Saavy Gupta, another second-year student, also expresses concern. “We had already studied the IPC, CrPC, and IEA in our first year which are considered foundational to the criminal justice system. We are told to memorise these laws by heart,” she says.

A professor underlines that students will have to be well-versed in both the new and old laws. “As things stand, we will have to teach students both the old and the new laws together…that will be our biggest challenge,” says Professor Anup Surendranath who teaches criminal law and constitutional law at the National Law University (NLU). For cases filed before July 1, at any stage (charges, trial, prosecution evidence), old laws will be applicable. The cases filed after July 1, however, are being registered under the new laws.

In courts, according to Professor Surendranath, both old and new laws will be referred for at least 15 years with the older laws applicable to the pending cases. Surendranath is also the executive director of Project 39A, a criminal justice programme at NLU.

The Bar Council of India (BCI) has assured it will decide within 10 days on the process of incorporating new laws in the syllabus of all the students. “We have a legal education committee that is headed by a former Supreme Court judge…we also have an academic committee,” Bar Council of India chairman Manan Kumar Mishra tells The Indian Express.

He adds that after various meetings with the committees, a decision will be taken in 10 days. “It is important to incorporate the new criminal laws in the syllabus of all the law students,” he says.

Meanwhile, the final-year students too can’t escape a deep dive into the new laws as they head to a law firm for an internship, or plan their future career course.

“Professors and students should both be trained on the new laws,” says Professor Meghraj who teaches at DU.

He also says that students who have studied the new laws will have an edge over other students in terms of entrance exams. “All entrance and competitive exams will have questions from the new criminal laws…those who haven’t read them as part of their curriculum will have to work harder to crack the entrance exams,” he adds. However, Krishna Murari, another professor at the college, says that the students will have to work a little harder but won’t have major issues due to the overlap. “There is a strong overlap between the old and the new laws,” he says.

“There are new things in the laws as well…we have prepared PDFs and documents for the students to help them…we will always support them,” he stresses. He also says that the BSA, which has replaced the Indian Evidence Act, does not have major changes but the BNSS has some significant changes compared to the CrPC.

(Insha Husain is an intern with The Indian Express)