Lawyers Association battle for establishment of NLU at Aurangabad; SC refuses to entertain, sends it back to High Court

A lawyer’s association, the Lawyers’ Forum for General Utility & Litigating Public, Aurangabad is involved in a court battle with the Maharashtra government and the Bombay High Court to get a National Law University (NLU) established at Aurangabad..The Petitioner’s appeal in the Supreme Court challenging the decision of the Bombay High Court transferring all the cases pertaining to the matter from the Aurangabad Bench of the Bombay High Court to the Bombay Bench came up for hearing yesterday. A Division Bench comprising Justice Vikramajit Sen and Justice C Nagappan, refused to grant relief but allowed the Petitioner to withdraw the petition with the liberty to file a review before the High Court..Advocate SB Talekar along with advocates Vipin Nair, Atul Dakh and Pradnya Talekar appeared for the Petitioner..The history of the case can be traced back to 2007 when the Maharashtra Chief Minister decided to establish an NLU at Aurangabad. However, in 2011, the State Minister for Education forwarded a proposal to the Central government to establish the NLU at Nagpur. The Petitioner then filed a writ petition before the Aurangabad Bench of the Bombay High Court seeking implementation of the earlier decision to establish the NLU at Aurangabad..In response, the Maharashtra State including the Chief Minister of Maharashtra and the Minister of Higher and Technical Education (Respondents) filed affidavits confirming the decision of the Government to establish NLU at Aurangabad and further gave an undertaking to introduce the Bill for the same in the Budget session of 2012. They also said that they would take the necessary steps to start the NLU at Aurangabad from the academic year 2012-13. Subsequently, the Petitioner filed a contempt petition alleging that the Respondents failed to comply with their undertaking given in the affidavits..However, in an interesting move, the High Court transferred both the writ petition and the contempt petition from the Aurangabad Bench to its principal Bench at Bombay. The Petitioner then filed three petitions – two of them challenging the administrative decision of the Chief Justice to transfer the cases to the principal Bench and the other challenging the Constitutionality of the proviso to Rule 2 of the Bombay High Court (Appellate side) Rules, 1960 (Rules)..The challenge was mainly on the ground that the power of Chief Justice to transfer the cases from Benches to principal Seat has to be balanced against the Fundamental Right of access to justice guaranteed under Article 21 as well as equality and non-arbitrary treatment under Article 14, both being principles of basic structure of the Constitution..The High Court allowed the petition challenging the Rules but rejected the other two thereby upholding the decision of the High Court transferring the writ petition and the contempt petition to the principal Bench..The Petitioner then approached the Supreme Court against the said orders..The appeal in the Supreme Court was on the ground that the Division Bench confused the power of the Chief Justice to frame roster with the power to transfer cases, contending that while the former is absolute, the latter needs to be balanced against the Fundamental Rights of the litigants..The Court heard Advocate Talekar at length before allowing him to withdraw the petition with the liberty to approach the High Court..Interestingly, according to this news report, a temporary campus has been allotted to the NLU at Jogeshwari in Mumbai. An unused two-storey building in the premises of Ismail Yusuf college was handed over to the NLU’s Vice Chancellor BP Panda last month.