A similar grant of between Rs 7.5 and 9 crore was also extended by the UGC to the other 12 national law schools (NLU) late last year under the eleventh five-year plan, after their vice chancellors (VC) lobbied aggressively against excluding the law schools from central funding.
NLU Delhi VC Ranbir Singh told Legally India that law schools were struck out of the purview of the grant around three years ago when the UGC’s former vice chairman “wrote on a file, [I] don’t know in which mood”, that NLUs belonged to the self-funded category of institutions.
Singh said that this administrative act of the UGC came to light when the VCs’ mentioned the dearth of funds during their discussions with former law minister Veerappa Moily, after he had announced his second generation reforms in legal education in 2010.
“[We brought to his attention] that we haven’t been getting grants. For some reason the grants have been stopped,” said Singh, and added: “Our condition was that all institutes are making money through self-financed courses. So stop everybody’s funding. Why should the IITs and IIMs get [Rs] 200-300 crores when here [in law schools] we are not even getting [Rs] 10 crores?”
In April 2012, after analysis of college financial accounts, NLSIU Bangalore was facing a Rs 2 crore funding gap in the 2012-13 financial year with the Karnataka government having also halved its grant from Rs 4 crore, Legally India had reported in Mint at the time.
On the other hand, the Delhi government had extended another Rs 15 crore to the five-year-old NLU Delhi in that financial year.
Both Singh and NLSIU vice-chancellor R Venkata Rao said VCs had been writing to the UGC for more than a year before June 2012 to get the funding back, without eliciting a response. Between June and August 2012 over 10 meetings were convened with the college heads, Moily and then human resource development (HRD) minister Kapil Sibal. According to Singh and Rao, they were sympathetic to the plight of the law schools.
“Hats off to Veerappa Moily for giving us such a patient hearing,” said Rao.
Rao said that the Rs 7.6 crore approved for NLSIU, in addition to the Rs 1 crore approved by the Karnataka government for the April 2012 to March 2013 financial year, will be used toward the construction of a new academic block, additional girls’ hostels, an “international training centre” with 212 “world-class” classrooms, new conference rooms, eight new basketball courts, and a “big examination room with improved acoustics”.
“The examination room will be ready for use when the college reopens next on 10 March 2013,” he added.
Singh said: “One thing we got approved from our academic council is that probably in the case of highly qualified people [in the faculty], such as from the Ivy League, Cambridge, Oxford we will renegotiate their salaries. Unfortunately when everyone remains in [the present pay] scale, some people will go off to the private institutes where there are worse-off students.”
In April 2012, NLSIU registrar V Nagaraj had told Legally India that attracting highly skilled lawyers to teaching remained a problem for the 15-year-old law school.
Last week Bangalore dismissed its 2008 alum and visiting faculty Sidharth Chauhan from service without reasons, as first reported by Legally India, after he had openly protested the administration’s imposition of a 9pm curfew in campus after an alleged rape near campus.
Rao yesterday reiterated that he wished to make no further comment on the decision aside from it having been an executive council decision, which he stood by.
Comments
Cheap shot at Jindal and Amity.
At a time when NLS is undergoing a major faculty crunch and is being unable to attract even decent academic talent, Ranbir Singh's statements are to be lauded while Rao's are to be seen with an extremely perplexed expression.
He got Mrinal Satish and Aparna Chandra from YLS
Anup Surendranath from Oxford
Chinmayi Arun LSE
Nawneet Vibhaw from Lewis & Clark Law School
RA's from Geaorge Washington, SOAS, Harvard
So get you facts right boy.
It's the best Environmental Law Program in the world. Which is what Nawneet went there to study. Which is his field of interest.
You need a far more focused lead, however. Why is this news? Why do we care? If your lead graph cites a November '12 funding allocation and some on-campus digging, it's not clear what the urgency or focus of the story is. Just ask yourself, where is the news in this?
As it is, it looks a little as if NLSIU is using a stale PR release about construction to paper over the sorry discussion of the political wrangling at the school.
Your lead should have been: "NLSIU on building spree with renewed funding committment from Centre." If you're trying to make some other point, it was lost.
But better effort, and your written English is improving. That is a genuine compliment, no snickering or irony from anyone out there!
Thanks again for your feedback, glad you liked the story.
The news-hook admittedly is not that fresh, but surprisingly this has not been reported anywhere yet. It was also a direct follow-up to our Mint feature of April 2012.
We couldn't have missed reporting this important development, even if a bit late.
Best wishes,
Prachi
Why not join the LI team if you think you're such an excellent journalist? Also, you sound exactly like one of those self-satisfied shmucks that abound in law school. Grow up and stop picking on PS.
Why not join the LI team if you think you're such an excellent journalist? Also, you sound exactly like one of those self-satisfied shmucks that abound in law school. Grow up and stop picking on PS.[/quote]
A blog is a cooperative effort, and your and my roles are to contribute quality comments.
Prachi "buried the lead" in her story, but her effort deserved recognition. I recognized it. She was hammered on a story a couple of weeks ago and has stepped up her game.
As for qulaifications to comment - I have an M.A. in journalism from one of the top U.S. journalism schools, worked for years as a deadline journalist for one of the top ten newspapers in the U.S., have three law degrees (including one from NLSIU) and practiced with two major international law firms.
Oh, and "schmuck" is spelled with a "c." Schmuck!
Why not join the LI team if you think you're such an excellent journalist? Also, you sound exactly like one of those self-satisfied shmucks that abound in law school. Grow up and stop picking on PS.[/quote]
A blog is a cooperative effort, and your and my roles are to contribute quality comments.
Prachi "buried the lead" in her story, but her effort deserved recognition. I recognized it. She was hammered on a story a couple of weeks ago and has stepped up her game.
As for qulaifications to comment - I have an M.A. in journalism from one of the top U.S. journalism schools, worked for years as a deadline journalist for one of the top ten newspapers in the U.S., have three law degrees (including one from NLSIU) and practiced with two major international law firms.
Oh, and "schmuck" is spelled with a "c." Schmuck![/quote]
BUUUURRRN!
Go do work. With all those "qulaifications" you should really be trying to get somewhere in life.
@Prachi - Don't take crap from randoms! Chin chin!
Finally when my friend from 3 rows away screams an answer I can probably hear it much better this time!
I really owe to the NLSIU admin for this generous consideration.
So while NLSIU keeps making wasteful expenditures, NLU Delhi renegotiates salaries for good faculty. Thus, Mrinal Sathish, an alumnus of law school , who was denied a post at NLS goes and teaches at NLU Delhi. Way to go Venkata Rao. By the end of your tenure, NLS' indisputable run as the top law school would have definitely come to an end.
2. Terming 'Dazed and Confused' as 'D&C' was sarcasm. As an editor, please refrain.
3. 212 classrooms for? Are they planning to increase their intake? If no, we need to know the reason. Plus where did they get so much space to do so?
All the Best
As a VC of a reputed institute the least he could do is not speak bu****it without any evidence rather than talking s**t. The Non NLU student already face a tough competition from NLUites in terms of internship/placement etc and these kind of academician are only making the situation worse by making loose comments .
Well I did not make it to a NLU but it may be hardwork or it maybe bad luck as CLAT really wont be the best example for a fair and objective test where there is no negative marking, syllabus given is not adhered to, paper gets leaked etc etc but the point is the way Mr. Singh puts it makes it look like that every Non NLU student is an idiot and I highly doubt thats the case. My father is a HC judge and he did his education from a Non NLU college but yeah thats make him a fool I guess.
The library timings have become reasonable too.
All in all, I'm impressed.