Arbitrariness by the administration of National Law Schools: The NLUJ Chapter

National Law Schools are often tagged as the centres of premiere legal education in India, giving its students the training to build a strong legal system and defend the various cornerstones of our Constitution. Yet, the irony is that the conduct of these law schools often reflects arbitrariness, a characteristic that goes against the very ideals of our Constitution. However, this reflection is not that of the students of these law schools, but of a handful of people, more commonly known as the ‘University administration’..Moreover, these issues seem to be rampant whenever there is a change in the University administration of a National Law School. In the backdrop of the NUJS Petition against the affairs in the University, I thought it fit to give an insight into the affairs of the National Law University, Jodhpur (NLUJ). After all, this seems to be an issue affecting all law schools in their own ways, and it begs the question: What is going wrong?.A classic instance of the unreasonableness in NLUJ after a change in the University administration would be the Seventh Convocation held on January 19, 2014. Before I go into the issue, let me give you a brief background on convocations in NLUJ. For every batch, the convocation takes place a year and a half after one has written the final exams. So, a student of the batch of 2013 will have his/her convocation in January, 2015..However, from July 2013 onwards, NLUJ has had a new Vice Chancellor. Around November last year, the Batch of 2013 (to which I belong) found out that the University has scheduled the seventh convocation for the Batch of 2012 and 2013 together on January 19, 2014. Essentially, more than 160 students were scheduled to have their convocation on the same day without any prior notice. Till date, no student in the Batch of 2013 has received any invite for this convocation. And I was informed that the students in the Batch of 2012 recieved an email on January 10, 2014 asking them to confirm their presence for the convocation by 06 January, 2014. In my opinion, sending a general invite informing the students of their own convocation through email is a fairly simple task but I could be wrong. The fact, however, remains that no student received any notice or information about his/her own convocation..More importantly, when the University decided to make a change with respect to the convocation for the Batch of 2013, they did not find the need to consult with anyone from that batch. But of course, why would the University administration care to take the opinion of those who would be most affected by the change in policy? One can argue that there is no legal requirement to consult those who are affected, provided the matter was duly deliberated. However, this ‘duly deliberated’ standard in law schools is more of a formality. Despite the fact that student representations were made to the VC and the Executive Council, the students were not given any reasoned explanation for this change in policy. In my view, the objections made by the students were clearly not ‘deliberated’ upon as they ought to have been..You could still argue that these facts do not reflect the true nature of the arbitrariness involved in this issue. The date of convocation i.e 19 January, was the date on which the Bar Council of India had scheduled the Sixth All India Bar Examination (AIBE-VI). This date was fixed by the BCI before NLUJ decided to hold its seventh Convocation on that very day. Evidently, the people involved in deciding the Convocation date could not be bothered by the students who had to give AIBE-VI. In short, NLUJ decided to give the students of the Batch of 2013 an option: either sit for the AIBE that is mandatory for every law student to practice law in India, or attend the convocation. Despite various representations made by students, due to which the University administration realised that the Convocation and AIBE-VI are on the same date, the request to consider an alternate date was rejected. Student representations did not ask the University to cancel the convocation as set by them. Rather, it was requested, as the normal practice was, to schedule the convocation for the Batch of 2013 in January, 2015 or any other date in 2014 that would be possible and convenient for a majority of the students of the Batch of 2013 to attend. All these requests fell on deaf ears. At one point, we were informed that the convocation would be held in absentia of the entire Batch of 2013, if need be..Let me now get to the practical difficulties this issue has caused. As mentioned before, not one of us from Class of ’13 was informed of the change in policy regarding the convocation. Then, despite the numerous representations made stating the reasonable ground that the Convocation has been scheduled on the same day as AIBE-VI, there was no effective response from the ‘University administration’. In view of the uncertainty on whether the administration would, against all hopes, consider our request, the few who could go for the convocation waited for a final response before booking their tickets. And given the limited number of trains, by the time many people wanted to book their tickets, all the seats were filled up because the convocation had more than 100 students and their families coming in..Moreover, given the small size of Jodhpur city, the number of accomodation options were limited. Despite these odds, some students managed to attend the convocation, which was certainly not organized in the best manner. In fact, the University administration decided to announce the gold medals of only those students from the Batch of 2013 who were present for the convocation during the ceremony. Naturally, since some of them could not be there, their hard work of five years to achieve that gold medal was diluted by the University administration. Announcing those names would have hardly taken 4-5 minutes in the entire ceremony..Let me now come to what the Batch of 2013 missed out because of this issue. Attending the Convocation is a dream for every student. Admittedly, many of us may not have known its relevance when we started law school. But, when you have completed five years of law school, during which time you have struggled in various phases, the Convocation and the conferment of the B.A., LL.B. (Hons.) Degree is what you look forward to. All of us wanted to come back, as a batch, one last time to the University, relive our time in law school, and proudly receive the degree in front of our parents and relatives..After all it is the duty of the University to confer the degree to every student. Along with it goes the unwritten rule that the University would make it possible, if not convenient, for the students to be present at this proud moment in their lives. Admittedly, it would be next to impossible for the University to schedule the convocation when every student can attend it. But, is it too difficult to schedule it when it is possible for most students of a batch to attend it?.Before wrapping this issue in the garb of legality and policy, let us for once think of the humane and reasonable thing that ought to have been done. The University administration could have just had the Convocation on January 19 for the Batch of 2012 (all of whom have given the AIBE), and have had the convocation for the Batch of 2013 any other time which was possible for most of the students of the Batch of 2013 to attend. But, without even consulting with any student or, in my opinion, at any level, the University administration arbitrarily decided to keep the convocation on the date when it was not possible for most of the students of the Batch of 2013 to attend it. And the end result was that out of a batch of more than 85 students (Batch of 2013), less than 20 students attended the Convocation at NLUJ..At this time, I would also like to remind you that National Law Schools do not gain their repute because of their respective administration. It is the students that take the University to heights. The Batch of 2013, like all other batches, has been instrumental in successfully organising various events on behalf of NLUJ. They have brought various achievements to the University. The students have worked very hard for the University, despite all odds from the attitude of the ‘University administration’ to not cooperate with the students...I understand that issues related to convocation is University policy and that there are many reasons behind these policies. But, the issue at hand indicates that something has gone wrong somewhere. How else could you explain the convocation for a batch being held at a time when the majority of the students could not have attended it because they had to sit for the mandatory AIBE as scheduled by the BCI. And this is not an isolated incident. Ever since the change in the ‘University administration’, there has been a complete change in various policies that affects the students without any consultation with the students. The character of the University, thus, changes with the change of people in power. In fact, some of the best faculties in NLUJ have left after a change in the ‘University administration’. These teachers, who were often a source of inspiration to students, had to leave the University because of the difficult environment in the University brought about by the change in regime..As an alumnus, I can only hope that things change for the better for the current students of NLUJ. The present state of affairs in NLUJ may be regarded as something that the current students have not faced till date. However, they must take strong and active steps to ensure a proper check of any arbitrariness by the University administration. These steps to be taken, when necessary, should not be confined to reactions within the four walls of the University. Matters must be brought before the appropriate authorities outside the University as the situation deems necessary. At the same time, these authorities must provide a more effective response to the legitimate complaints of the students. In fact, it is high time that relevant authorities take note of these situations in various National Law Schools to ensure that the standards of legal education in these institutions remain as they should..Manu Thadikkaran graduated from the National Law University, Jodhpur in 2013. He is currently pursuing an LLM in international dispute settlement (MIDS) in Geneva. Views expressed are personal.