Amity Delhi has moved to a more transparent and stringent system of attendance for students, but is functioning without an official head after student protests following the suicide of student Sushant Rohilla. Rohilla, who was allegedly harassed by the law school’s administration over attendance issues.

The law school now provides all students real time online access to their attendance records through a personal ID which each student can log in to. The attendance is marked strictly in accordance with the Bar Council of India (BCI) rules and Amity’s affiliating university GGSIPU’s rules, read together.

- Also read: Background on the aftermath of Rohilla’s suicide.

Amity devised the system of online real-time access to attendance records, over the last month, in response to a public interest litigation filed in the Delhi high court, against Amity, by its 2012 alumni Divyadeep Chaturvedi.

Chaturvedi had not asked for an online system to be put in place but he had prayed for directions to Amity to devise a transparent system of attendance. He had also challenged Amity’s practice of making all its students sign an undertaking annually, in which they would waive their right to challenge detention if their attendance was below a certain percentage.

Chaturvedi had also asked the court to make it mandatory for colleges to appoint a student counselor to guide students on personal academic and other problems and prevent stressful situations such as in Rohilla’s case. However he didn’t press this prayer after the Supreme Court took suo moto cognisance of a letter written to the Chief Justice of India by Rohilla’s classmate, in which the classmate had alleged that Rohilla faced harassment at the hands of a faculty member and Amity’s administration.

Chaturvedi told us that he hopes the SC would combine this larger prayer in its suo moto writ.

Success?

Chaturvedi’s prayers on attendance succeeded on 4 October. Amity submitted in court that it had now provided online access to attendance and gave a demo of the system in court at 2PM The system of attendance undertakings was also scrapped at Amity.

Student sources we recently spoke to commented that attendance rules are far more stringent at Amity now, than they were before Rohilla’s suicide. Following the student protests over the issue of Rohilla having allegedly faced harassment by the authorities just before his suicide, Amity’s director KL Saigal and political science teacher Isheeta Rutabhasini had resigned “considering the sentiments and emotions of students”, as we had reported in August (click to read).

One student commented: “The issue of arbitrariness and harassment apart, the thing with Isheeta [Rutabhasini] was that she used to give us attendance for organising events at Amity, because she knew that organising these things is important. Now there is no attendance for organising anything.”

Amity acting director DK Bandopadhyay, who is GGSIPU’s (IP) former vice chancellor, commented: “The rules now are strictly in accordance with the BCI’s and IP’s guidelines, i.e. a cumulative attendance of 75 per cent including a minimum of 70 per cent in each paper in a semester, is mandatory.

“[According to these guidelines] I have the power to relax five per cent attendance for either attending moot court competitions, or for training and internships (with law firms and lawyers). Not for medical [emergencies]. This is what is provided in the BCI rules too.”

Bandopadhyay, who will cease to act as Amity Delhi’s director once the law school appoints a regular director to fill Saigal’s vacated post, is being considered by Amity University to be appointed in an advisory capacity as the chair of all the three law centres on the Amity Campus: the two law colleges under Amity University, and Amity Delhi.

Students we spoke to recently complained that after the protest and the resignation of Amity’s director and oldest teachers Rutabhashini and history teacher Mona Sharma, Amity Delhi was directly under the control of the Amity university management and had lost its autonomy.

Amity’s first director Prof MK Balachandran, who was appointed as director when the law school was founded in 1999, had continued as its director until his superannuation in 2014. He is still associated with Amity Delhi in an advisory capacity but is not abreast of latest developments on campus as he has been on holiday since after the protests, he told us.

A spokesperson for Amity said that Amity’s faculty was always recruited by Amity University’s management – the Ritnand Balved Education Foundation (RBEF) - and that Sharma had resigned due to personal reasons.

Bandopadhyay also told us that the file for the 18 other students who were detained alongside Rohilla, is not yet closed, and that after detailed talks with GGSIPU they are presently considering whether to revoke their detention. A few of those 18 have challenged their detention in the Delhi high court on, among others, the ground that they were not given notice or hearing before being detained. We have reached out to one of the petitioners who confirmed that the case is being heard in the HC

Amity now has a class size of 240 – doubled from 120 – and Bandopadhyay confirmed that 30 full time faculty members and four visiting faculty taught at Amity. One full time faculty member Prof Bhanu Pratap is a professor by designation, Bandopadhyay said.

He added that a Corporate Recruitment Centre (CRC) was instituted this semester to conduct placements for all the three law centres on the Amity Noida campus, including Amity Delhi, and that one Amity Delhi full time faculty member and four students from the law school were representatives for Amity Delhi in the centre.