Bhubaneswar, Aug. 19: Students locked the gates of University Law College here for over an hour to protest against authorities’ decision to halve the number of seats for Bachelor of Legislative Laws (LLB) course from 160 to 80.

Sources said the authorities would introduce LLB with honours from this academic session instead of the existing course without honours, which used to have 160 seats.

“This is a new course which will be on a par with law courses offered by Delhi University and Banaras Hindu University,” said a law college official.

A student said a similar course was being introduced at Madhusudan Law College, Cuttack, with an intake of 160, while this college had decided to reduce the seats by 50 per cent. Both University Law College and Madhusudan Law College are constituent colleges of Utkal University.