NLU Mumbai will start classes this year from its temporary campus in Jogeshwari with an annual budget of around Rs 10 crore, planning to admit 60 students through its independent entrance test.

“In all probability we will be conducting our own entrance test. That also we will finalise in one week [to] 10 days,” confirmed NLUM vice chancellor Prof Bhawani Prasad Panda.

NLUM had missed the deadline to be enrolled in the Common Law Admission Test (CLAT) this year, but Panda had in January told the DNA that he had “convinced” NLU Delhi to hold a join admission test for both colleges in NLU Delhi’s All India Law Entrance Test (Ailet), which is separate from the CLAT.

India’s newest national law university had its executive council meeting on Wednesday in which its course structure and fee structure was decided and it was resolved to ask the government for a permanent campus at the earliest, confirmed Panda.

“The executive council has been insisting to the government that give us the land as soon as possible at a suitable place befitting to the standards and the status of our national law university,” he said.

The Maharashtra government had allotted a two-storey building in Jogeshwari’s Ismail Yusuf college to NLUM for its campus, one day after media reports of a deadlock in the law school’s commencement due to a lack of funds from the government, reported DNA India.

Temporary campus disputed?

But Muslim groups had soon agitated against the government’s order of allotment, citing a pending Bombay high court case in which the allotment of portions of the Ismail Yusuf campus to various parties was challenged because the land was under the Waqf board and meant for the upliftment of the Muslim community, according to another DNA report.

Panda told Legally India that the agitation by the Muslim community was because of the wrong impression that the building had been permanently allotted to NLUM.

“The building that has been given to us has not permanently been given to us nor is it sufficient to carry on permanently. At the moment we have been given a small portion of the building of Ismail Yusuf college campus but only for two years. Government is trying to find out other places in Mumbai where this university can [function],” he said.

Budget to make Rs 10 crore annual budget to be made available to NLUM

Panda also said that the faculty and staff member posts in NLUM, for which the law school will advertise in the next 10 days, will be sanctioned posts of the government and their salaries will be included in the salaries component of the state budget. An annual outlay of Rs 10 crore for NLUM is expected in the upcoming budget.

“The government said only one sentence: that there is no problem for funds in making [NLUM] the best law university in this country. This university is something different from other national law universities because here the government is interested in taking the complete responsibility of the university right from the beginning to the end,” he said.

“Other universities have been given some particular money and there [the government’s] responsibility for the university is over. It’s not like that [here]. Here the posts for the university will be sanctioned posts of the government. So once they sanction posts the teaching expenses of the university and the infrastructure expenses of the university will be in the salary component of the government. So there will not be any problem as far as the finance is concerned,” he added.

Panda said that due to the small size of the current campus the law school will be admitting only 60 students this year. Due to the high salary costs, it would be recruiting only “a few social science teachers, a few law teachers and one or two senior teachers for guiding on research” on contractual appointments.

In addition to BALLB (Hons) NLUM is also considering offering a BCom LLB with history and political science as subjects in it.

The admission fee is fixed at around Rs 2 lakh including residential facility, even though the law school does not yet have a fixed residential space.

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