NUJS Kolkata was wrong in cancelling its online courses for those students who were already mid-session in these courses, the Calcutta high court said in a temporary order.
Justice Protik Prakash Banerjee heard the writ of Abhisek Panda and other students who had challenged the NUJS order that had suddenly shut down all the distance learning courses that it was offering through third party service providers, and wrote in his 1 November interim order:
Prima facie, I find that such course of action which affects the vital right of students without prior notice to them and without even offering to refund the fees that they have paid is arbitrary and does not become a premier institution such as the National University of Juridical Sciences.
the On-line courses for which the petitioners have enrolled prior to June 27, 2018 were something which the writ petitioners were entitled to complete and prima facie they are entitled to certificates if they completed successfully. Accordingly, [The order shutting down the courses] must be treated to be prospective and, therefore, the operation of [the order] shall remain stayed so far as those petitioners who have enrolled themselves and paid the fees prior to June 27, 2018 are concerned.
The judge also said that in further hearings of this writ it needs to be investigated why NUJS tied up with a non-UGC certified third party service provider to offer these courses in the first place.
He said that this order will continue to operate for two months until court re-opens after the winter break, after which the petitioner can apply for an extension of its operation.
NUJS had in June suspended distance learning courses that it was offering through third party service providers and this resulted in certificates being held up for students who had already completed courses, examination having been stalled for other students and overall confusion among the students currently pursuing these diploma and certificate courses offered by the law school, as we had then reported.
Comments
1. Questioning whether or not a party is UGC "certified" is not the same as banishing private enterprises
2. Whether NUJS or anyone labels the party as a 'technical partner' is quite irrelevant
3. By all accounts, it seems the courses were run by a private enterprise under the stamp of the university
4. It is not like the private enterprise was hired on a small fixed fee. Instead, it was giving NUJS a minor % as commission like a royalty
Since the Govt established, funds, supports & supervises NUJS which has enabled it to create its massive & impressive credibility, examining propriety in lending that name to a private enterprise for a small fee are quite valid. Let the court examine and be satisfied. What is the issue?
Lord Taluk knows he can brazen this out. And he knows that students have no option but to accept unilateral fee hikes that will finance refunds for distance edu courses and pay for a bloated and vile admin and faculty staff, litigation and arbitration fees.
SJA apparently had the university agree to an online RTI facility. The SJA keeps ranting about opacity and information blockade from the administration. Why has it not used this online RTI option? Or even the offline route?
If the UGC is informed maybe they will finally get the university to take action on the crores of money that have been given in excess to DEOs
See https://www.telegraphindia.com/states/west-bengal/ugc-asks-visva-bharati-to-recover-staff-excess-pay/cid/1675154?ref=west-bengal-atf_west-bengal-page
Or even push the university to take decisive action against the erring university staff who should be made liable to indemnify NUJS against the loss caused due to litigation fees and impending fee refunds.
How long will we allow ourselves to be fleeced to bankroll the corrupt in NUJS?
Interestingly, the EC records do not mention details of the legal opinions by Justices Sen and Talukdar. However, some whistleblower circulated those anonymously. Justice Sen's opinion was robust and scathing. It indicted the trio. Lord Taluk was verbose, dilatory and not for once did he engage with and rebut the opinion of Justice Sen possibly due to fraternal jealousy. Couched in rather weak legal reasoning, he let off the trio for extraneous reasons. Lord Taluk directed TA recovery from AKP because the defence was very flimsy.
The trio were also indicted by a retired district judge who actually calculated the lacs that would have had to be recovered. But that too got waylaid by Lord Taluk's opinion. So, what we have now is an EC that has accepted Justice Shyamal Sen's opinion indicting the trio but also the contrary opinion of Lord Taluk (that was commissioned after Justice Sen's opinion had been submitted to and accepted by the EC, which was also aware of the indictment by the district judge and recovery calculations).
Probably this makes it clear why two among the trio are leading members of the Justice League. I am not suggesting that you or anyone should back off from demanding recovery of excess funds from the faculty trio. But you probably understand the complications with Lord Taluk in the hot seat. The matter was hushed up in an earlier EC. What chance that it will be meaningfully and transparently discussed now? And does the EC really care?
A few months ago all of us got an email which underlined the relevant sections of the Justice PN Sinha report that two lovely ladies in faculty and admin ranks had collaborated to destroy and squirrel out damning evidence against a former Registrar. They also had the audacity to mislead the Sinha inquiry. What did the admin or EC do then or now? Not even a fake slap on the wrist. But slapping a student repeatedly and then faking an apology note (with no clarity whether it was accepted by the complainant) is enough to ward off any meaningful disciplinary action.
Ironically this lovely person with exemplary credentials most recently inquired into an incident of student violence on campus; will be an EC member soon and is a core member of the Justice League. Still think you can get anything legit done while Taluk lords over NUJS and its coffers?
Why stop at recovery of excess amounts paid to DEOs, rogue faculty et al? We should just stop paying fees unless we get what we paid for. We didn't pay fees for Lord Taluk to entertain us with Justice League playing politics with Injustice League; to create and settle IOUs with his friends in the Bar via avoidable litigation and arbitration fees; to trade in political favours; to oversee the creeping acquisition of our university by political factions; to install political hacks in key faculty and admin positions et al.
We can wait for Lord Taluk to turn our university into a wasteland (as is the case with many institutions in Bengal but also elsewhere in India) or assert our collective power to make changes that matter to us.
You want or think there will be action, right? Why don't ask our dear Lord Taluk to give a status report on the various inquiries and explain the (deliberately) slow pace. Some have not even started! [...] But Lord Taluk knows that. Have show cause notices been served? The AC and EC directed various inquiries on 10th and 12th of May. Will your dear admin please explain when they had the office orders issued for starting these inquiries? Can they explain the delay and institutional nonchalance? Certainly not expected of Lord Justice.
Can he explain why would well funded research centres be pushed into closure? Where is the evidence Lord Justice? Now that political trade offs have been made they will restart. The only thing that happened due to student action was a reset in the dealmaking calculi.
Guess who will pick up the tab? We, the students. The faculty and admin care about their paychecks. That's why they would read pay and promotion related UGC et al notifications carefully but claim ignorance when it comes to recruitment, distance edu etc. So the time servers will remain; the opportunists will pad up and leave; and the dedicated will be turfed out unceremoniously by the time servers and opportunists. If you are not with then, you are against them.
The faculty and admin get paid because we pay our fees. Right now we are not paying for quality education but our exploitation. Why should we pay high fees when we are going to become the regular dysfunctional, politically riven law colleges that depend on government dole. Our fees are meant to preserve our financial and academic autonomy to achieve excellence.
The only way we get this right is to take back what is rightfully ours. They are the few, we are the many. They are helping themselves at our expense. Nothing about us without us. And yes, us means every f***ing thing in this university and just not what we study, eat and s**t.
https://www.business-standard.com/article/pti-stories/bill-on-land-rights-to-enclave-dwellers-to-be-placed-in-wb-118111501111_1.html
Isn't the timing perfect? While we are giving exams, Lord Taluk f***s over.
Still think we shouldn't do #OmitThisTaluk?
1) Domicile/caste quota
2) New branches
3) Greater state govt representation
Time for another strike??
s. They
Let's temporarily suspend the bickering over whether the government move is legal; or unethical; or that students are an entitled lot to even discuss this news item et al. Why so serious? But also why so sneaky? Did we unknowingly catch someone with pants down?
Denied Supreme glory and realising that the grass is actually Greener on crossing over to the other side, Lord Taluk was always a willing catspaw for effecting a political takeover of our university.
Lord Taluk is the very embodiment of a committed judge even after retirement. Let us all learn to serve true Justice.
All hail Lord Justice
As things now stand, in the next 2 to 3 weeks the amendment bill will be passed, a puppet VC will be designated, Rather Particular and Pop Singer will be designated as Dean or Registrar, and the acting VC will coolly walk away (perhaps receiving a visiting professor appointment). The idea is to checkmate the SJA because of a lack of time, exams and holidays. One option that the SJA has is a request to the Chancellor for an appointment in Delhi (and he will probably grant one) but there is not enough time. At a local level, the Bar Library Club (headed by the ex-AG and consisting of many bigshot senior advocates ) could be approached, but similarly it may be too late.
All in all, the SJA has been outsmarted completely --- not for the first time.
Certainly there were horrible missteps but I don't think NLIU and HNLU played smarter. Before the NLIU students chanced on the API data of the VC aspirants from NLU Lucknow they had been done in by the HC and state government. And we are yet to see whether Vijaykumar will do a Lord Taluk on them. It is still early days for HNLU and they too nearly got sucked in a political maelstrom. We have to take longitudinal view before dissing SJA.
It is not true that NUJS is in financial distress. Refunds have not even started. Remember 70% of the money collected went to the private parties. More importantly, why are we leaking massive amounts to DEOs who have illegally overdrawn crores, a blessing bestowed on them by Rather Particular? What about PN Sinha report? Why is Lord Taluk opposed to even having a discussion on that? Why is Lord Taluk and AG stalling a proper investigation into the irregularities in faculty recruitments between 2012-17. Why have certain inquiries not even started and what do we make of the painfully slow progress in others?
I believe that both the Justice and Injustice Leagues have reached a detente. And the following are expected to happen:
1. The DEO pay dispute will be settled internally at our expense
2. Lord Taluk or his replacement VC will continue to frustrate and slow down the various inquiries. The mess will be kept alive to keep the MKS' out and also to scare away quality faculty. Only regime friendly or connected folks will be recruited. So quality faculty will be happenchance.
3. Once the relation resets are complete (almost done) the research centres will be restarted. But the more important reason is that political appointments need to be made to centres and Chairs. These centre heads or Chairs will be made members of the various statutory bodies of NUJS, which will further strengthen the hand of the state.
4. Tinker with student fees, including populist measures. Because any significant reduction or freeze in fees will cause a deficit, the opportunity is created for the state to eventually become paymasters. Once our university starts living off state largesse and dole, SJA will be snuffed out and possibly politicised. The fee setting/regulation powers that the state wishes to usurp from our FC and EC, will be used for political arm twisting.
5. We all know why politicians want control over student intake, entry requirements and faculty/staff requirements. We may not be taken out of CLAT immediately but eventually that will happen or limited weightage will be given to CLAT scores. Combined with the 30% domiciliary quota (which will hit 50% sooner than expected) the Bengali asmita will glower and tower.
6. NUJS as with many other edu institutions in this city and state will eventually become a has-been. Part of the rich political heritage of this state irrespective of the party in power is to destroy institutions while finger pointing others. To err is human...
1. Copy Jadavpur University, which successfully protested against government interference and received front-page media support.
2. Request the NLSIU SBA for a letter of support, as NLSIU too has the CJI as Chancellor and is also in threat of having domicile reservation imposed.
3. Reach out to Madhav Menon, BS Chimni and MP Singh for support.
4. Also approach the Director of IIM Calcutta (ex officio member of GC) for support. Curiously, IIM too is in transition right now and has a new director in waiting, so everything was very well planned.
5. Reach out to the ex-AG and President of the Cal HC Bar Library Club (Jayanta Mitra) + sympathetic SC and Cal HC judges (not naming them here).
6. Petition the new CLAT body.
7. Get alumni involved.
8. Start a concerted media campaign.
9. Wage war against the Dark Lord and his cronies in the faculty. One of them plagiarised his PhD thesis and is liable to be sacked per the new UGC Plagiarism rules.
10. Finally, prepare for litigation.
The SJA is to blame for this. PIB was driven out without a backup plan. He was heading out anyway. The protests should have continued unless concrete assurances were made. Alumni should have been consulted (like the first PIB protest engineered by Shamnad Basheer, where alumni got involved and signed the petition). Also, the acting VC was allowed to continue for 8 months. Academic standards were allowed to be diluted because of marks. Now the only option is to:
1. Copy Jadavpur University, which successfully protested against government interference and received front-page media support.
2. Request the NLSIU SBA for a letter of support, as NLSIU too has the CJI as Chancellor and is also in threat of having domicile reservation imposed.
3. Reach out to Madhav Menon, BS Chimni and MP Singh for support.
4. Also approach the Director of IIM Calcutta (ex officio member of GC) for support. Curiously, IIM too is in transition right now and has a new director in waiting, so everything was very well planned.
5. Reach out to the ex-AG and President of the Cal HC Bar Library Club (Jayanta Mitra) + sympathetic SC and Cal HC judges (not naming them here).
6. Petition the new CLAT body.
7. Get alumni involved.
8. Start a concerted media campaign.
9. Wage war against the Dark Lord and his cronies in the faculty. One of them plagiarised his PhD thesis and is liable to be sacked per the new UGC Plagiarism rules.
10. Finally, prepare for litigation.