@ Genius:
I stand by my previous criticisms of many of the academic decisions made by Prof. R. Venkata Rao during his tenure as NLSIU Vice-Chancellor between May 2009 and July 2019. The most prominent of these were the following:
(a) repeated misuse of provisions for re-evaluation; including hundreds of instances where the answer scripts were never sent to any external or internal teachers.
(b) the non-appointment of permanent teachers for over a decade; the last proper round of permanent recruitments of faculty had happened in September 2006. NLSIU had to wait till February 2020 for another round of permanent recruitments.
(c) non-application of mind in the allocation of teaching responsibilities, with several foundational courses having collapsed for a long-time.
(d) no serious scrutiny of course plans or teacher performance,
(e) blindly accepting student requests for condoning attendance shortages, even where students had hardly attended 50% of the scheduled classes.
(f) granting blanket extensions for project submissions and the like.

Such laxity was frequently justified in the name of popularity. All of those criticisms were made in my own name and they have been in the public domain for several years now. I am happy to discuss these points further with anyone who wants to do so directly. You are most welcome to call me or send an email. I will not engage further with anonymous comments here.

At the same time, I strongly condemn the practice of making anonymous allegations such as those made in Comment 4.1.1. by a person using the pseudonym 'What About?'. Whoever has written those comments should have the courage to come out with credible evidence to support some of the more serious allegations, be it against any person. Otherwise, it is quite pointless to be making such allegations now. I agree with you that handing out mementos to guests and providing hospitality to visitors is a trivial issue.

While I did openly support Sudhir Krishnaswamy's appointment last year, it is quite a stretch to claim that I and some others have 'planted him as VC'. That part of your statement is plainly wrong and deserves to be rebutted. His name was duly recommended by a Search-cum-Selection Committee consisting of Dr. M.P. Singh, Mr. K..K. Venugopal and Mr. Arvind Datar, which in turn was appointed by the NLSIU Executive Council. The mobilisation of opinion among alumni and students only started after there were visible efforts to obstruct the completion of the appointment process. I do have a high opinion of Sudhir Krishnaswamy's scholastic abilities and his commitment towards academic excellence. So do many others who have studied or worked with him over the last two decades. That is why many of us supported his appointment. That does not mean that his decisions are above criticism.

The experience of the past year has shown that he has rushed into several administrative decisions without adequately considering their impact on students, be it the hurried drafting of rules for conducting online exams (May 2020), the lack of clarity owing to the changes made to the scholarship policy (August 2020) and most evidently the attempt to hold a separate entrance exam earlier this month. This only shows that the wider NLSIU community (faculty, students, staff, alumni) must be vigilant in pointing out the fallacies in such decisions.

After the NLAT was announced (on September 3, 2020) I did reach out to Sudhir (phone call on September 6, 2020) and directly cautioned him about the very real possibility of writ petitions being filed against it as well as the adverse affect it would have on relations with the other Vice-Chancellors of the various NLUs. Several others had directly conveyed the same message to him. I was constrained from commenting on the NLAT publicly since the matter was sub judice until September 21, 2020. Furthermore, Prof. Faizan Mustafa had already put forward most of the arguments against it in the public domain. In my present institutional role, there was no need for me to express any disagreement with what Prof. Mustafa has already said through his articles published in LiveLaw or the videos uploaded on his Youtube channel. The situation is very different from that in 2012-2013 when I had criticised some of the academic decisions made by Prof. R. Venkat Rao. At that time, I was employed at NLSIU and it was my professional duty to draw attention to academic malpractices at that institution when most of the faculty members were keeping quiet out of fear of administrative retaliation. Let us compare that with the present situation. I have been employed at NALSAR since June 2013 and Prof. Mustafa who has a considerable public platform had already taken on the mantle of criticising the sudden decision made by NLSIU. There was also a public clamour against the NLAT announcement, especially from law aspirants, coaching centres and a majority of present NLSIU students as well as alumni from recent batches. Most of the objections were already being voiced quite effectively and the case was argued with competence before the apex court.

The pandemic has obviously heightened sensitivities all around and there is definitely a trust-deficit at the moment. What has happened in the last 32 years of the institution's history is less important when compared to the needs of the present. As for the personalised advice about 'taking losses', I can assure you that I have taken many of them over the last 20 years and I am still very much here. I do intend to continue doing my job with honesty and transparency irrespective of which institution I am employed at. If that is ostensibly a cause for 'further embarrassment' in the coming years, so be it. That is the path I have chosen.