Ishwara Bhatt

In its draft WBNUJS Service Rules 2016, NUJS Kolkata has been seeking to restrict its faculty and staff from certain kinds of marriage, trade and business, association, engagement with the press and access to courts.

The Calcutta high court on 26 July dismissed the second appeal of NUJS Kolkata registrar Surajit Mukhopadhyay against his suspension from the post by the vice-chancellor (VC), clearing the way for his dismissal by the university.

NUJS Kolkata vice chancellor Ishwara Bhatt announced at the law school's convocation that its guidelines to protect of interns from sexual harassment would be published on its website soon, reported the Telegraph.

The report added that Bhatt promised that if an intern’s employer does not take action against a harasser on receiving a complaint of sexual harassment from the university, the university will “help the intern in a suitable way”.

The report stated that the policy follows sexual harassment allegations by former NUJS students against ex-Supreme Court Justice AK Ganguly, and "another Supreme Court judge", whose name the paper did not specify.

Newspapers reported in January that one of former Justice Swatanter Kumar's NUJS interns, while he was still a sitting judge, alleged that the judge sexually harassed her. Kumar has filed a defamation suit against several newspapers, which will next get heard on 19 May, obtaining a temporary and partial restriction on media reporting the allegations against him without also stating that they are mere allegations.

A Right to Information (RTI) response confirmed that the vice chancellor (VC) Prof Ishwara Bhatt claimed that he rejected interviewing an academic candidate via Skype because candidates would have to give a demonstration class, which has been contradicted by the former VC Prof MP Singh and college sources.

NUJS Kolkata students have been collecting evidence of possible administrative malfunctioning at the university...

NUJS Kolkata will appoint former Chief Justice of India (CJI) Altamas Kabir as an honorary professor by Monday, if no objections are received.

Since the allegation early this month that a “recently-retired” Supreme Court judge sexually harassed at least one intern (“SJ”), print, online and TV media news have been reporting the story’s twists and turns avidly.

Complaints included declining faculty standards and opaque, apparently arbitrary decision-making from the top.