SINGULAR STORIES BUT SHARED

DESTINIES
The recent unfortunate turn of events at the National University of
Study and Research in Law (NUSRL), Ranchi have starkly highlighted
the problem plaguing all National Law Universities, old and the new
alike.1 First and foremost, we, the Student Bar Associations of NLSIU,
NALSAR and NUJS affirm deep solidarity with each and every student
in NUSRL and commend their courage in standing up for what is right
and also rightfully theirs to claim. The lax attitude of their
administration is regrettable. The mismanagement of university funds
robs these students of their legitimate aspiration of availing even
basic amenities that are expected of a public university.

Lack of accountability of those appointed at the helm of these

universities and minimal transparency in the use of allocated funds
lead to a dismal state of affair at many public institutions. It was
heartening to see a constructive dialogue among the students and
representatives from the judiciary and the state. The compromises
thus reached, that is annual publication of audit reports, appointment
of a financial officer, setting up of a school review commission and
most importantly, permission of formation of a student union would go
a long way in ensuring effective checks and balances between the
administration and the administered. Kudos to these students for
having attained that and we hope the resolutions passed in the
meeting are abided by.

However, this also throws the elephant in the room to the fore. The
National Law Universities (NLUs) have been struggling due to lack of
funds. NLUs are state universities2 and are formed under a statute
passed by the respective state legislature. This means that they rely
on the University Grants Commission and their home state for funds.
We dug deeper and found out how the entire discipline of law is
neglected in this regard.

The latest annual report of UGC that is publicly available is for the
period 2014-2015.3 Table 3.1(b1) of the report shows the Grant
Allocated & Released to State Universities under General

1
Prachi Srivastava, Students have locked down NUSRL Ranchi campus for 24h now
over perennial cash crunch, mismanagement, LEGALLY INDIA (April 11, 2017)
available at http://www.legallyindia.com/lawschools/nusrl-ranchi-s-function-of-
poverty-students-lock-out-admin-faculty-demand-admin-overhaul-20170411-8433.
2
List of State Universities, UNIVERSITY GRANTS COMMISSION, available at
http://www.ugc.ac.in/stateuniversity.aspx.
Development Assistance Scheme,4 Coaching Scheme for
SC/ST/OBC/Minorities and Equal Opportunity Cell Scheme during XII
Plan Period (2012 - 2015). On an average, about Rs 9 Crores was
allocated to various NLUs. This allocation is not annual but is spread
across the whole of XII Plan Period. It culminates into, as per the
report, release of funds anywhere between Rs 70 Lakhs to Rs 2 Crores
per annum, based on 2014-2015 data, until the exhaustion of the
allocated budget. Moreover, after the dissolution of the erstwhile
Planning Commission, there is no clarity on if, when and how NLUs
will be provided further grants by the UGC.

The second source of funding is through state budgets, which is often

very erratic and largely depends on realization of importance of NLUs
by individual states. While some of the states like Delhi and Gujarat
are generous in funding their NLUs, most other states are not so kind.
NLSIU, for instance receives only Rs 2 Crores as an annual grant from
Karnataka Government.5 It hardly meets 3 months’ worth of salaries
of its staff. It needs to be mentioned that seventh pay commission
recommendations will be applicable to these universities in the
coming months, thereby increasing the cost of salaries by another
30%. On the other hand, barring a few instances here and there, NUJS
does not have any steady support from the West Bengal State
Government.

As a result of these severe shortages, the annual tuition fee of these

NLUs sky rockets as the revenue generated from fees acts as the
prime source of meeting the budgetary deficit. This fact is evident
from exorbitant fees of Rs 2,80,000 at NUJS, Rs 2,27,000 at NALSAR,
Rs 1,90,000 at NUSRL, Rs 1,76,000 at NLSIU, and so on. Meager
funding leads to not hiring quality faculty, reliance on ad-hoc faculty
and failure to attract talent to legal academia. Plethora of research
proposals, University needs (NUSRL infrastructure debt to PWD for
instance) and student demands are turned down citing lack of funds.
The high fees act as a disincentive for students with unprivileged
backgrounds to even choose law as a profession. Other undergraduate
disciplines offered by Delhi University or even post-graduate

3
Annual Report, 2014-15, UNIVERSITY GRANTS COMMISSION, available at
http://www.ugc.ac.in/page/Annual-Report.aspx.
4
Guidelines for General Development Assistance to Universities, UNIVERSITY GRANTS
COMMISSION, available at http://www.ugc.ac.in/pdfnews/0423748_Guidelines-for-
General-Development-Assistance-to-Universities.pdf.
5
Kian Ganz, Funding crunch looms over Indian law schools, LIVEMINT (April 26,
2012) available at
http://www.livemint.com/Politics/FXxhWV2V9srpQEFMi5paPO/Funding-crunch-
looms-over-Indian-law-schools.html.
disciplines at JNU have an all-inclusive annual fee of less than Rs
10,000.

In order to remedy this state of affairs, these institutes of excellence,

which provide quality legal education need to be converted into
Institutes of National Importance (INI).6 An Institute of National
Importance is defined as an institute ‘which serves as a pivotal player
in developing highly skilled personnel within the specified region of
the country/state’. While there exists no guideline for the same,7 we
believe that on such evaluation, as may be prescribed, the NLUs will
squarely fall within the criteria of contributing highly skilled
personnel to the legal profession, judiciary, bureaucracy, policy think
tanks, academia and various other avenues.

These INIs, like IITs, NITs, IIITs and now IIMs after cabinet approval
of the IIM Bill, 2017 receive funding directly from the Central
Government as part of the Ministry of Human Resource
Development’s budget for Higher Education. 8 It provides almost Rs
7800 crore funding to IITs, Rs 3500 crore funding to NITs, Rs 1000
crore funding to IIMs, Rs 650 crores to IISERs etc. The case for such
recognition for NLUs would be in pari materia with that of the NITs.
They earlier used to be Regional Engineering Colleges (RECs)
managed by State Governments but were recognized as the INIs by
the National Institute of Technology Act, 2007. This Act accorded the
status of INIs to NITs and empowered the “Central Government to,
after due appropriation made by Parliament by law in this behalf, pay
to every Institute in each financial year such sums of money and in
such manner as it may think fit.”9

What are we looking at through this statement? Apart from expressing

solidarity and commending the courage and determination of our
counterparts at NUSRL, this is a declaration of our intent to work
towards charting a course of action for recognition of NLUs as
Institutes of National Importance for all the above-mentioned reasons.
The root of the problem needs to be fixed. We are in the process of
contacting student bodies of all the NLUs to endorse our claim. We
also request all the Vice Chancellors of the National Law Universities

6
List of Institutions of National Importance, MINISTRY OF HUMAN RESOURCE AND
DEVELOPMENT available at http://mhrd.gov.in/institutions-national-importance.
7
Thomas Manuel, So Who Decides What an Institute of National Importance is?, THE
WIRE (July 22, 2015) available at https://thewire.in/7014/demystifying-higher-
education-in-india-second-of-a-series/.
8
Union Finance Budget, 2017-18, available at http://indiabudget.nic.in/ub2017-
18/eb/sbe58.pdf.
9
Section 20, The National Institutes of Technology Act, 2007.
and the Bar Council of India to recognize and appreciate this problem
so that we can work together to garner appropriate funding from the
Government.

Student Bar Association, NLSIU Student Bar

Council, NALSAR

Student Juridical Association, WBNUJS