Law schools

The High Court of Delhi today asked the Supreme Court to explain why it has only allowed national law university graduates and graduates from universities “approved” by the Supreme Court to apply for the annual law-clerk openings in the court.

Nirma University, Institute of Law, Ahmedabad entered into a cooperation agreement with the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators (CIArb) today, inaugurating its new alternative dispute resolution (ADR) centre.

Indian Law Institute (ILI) Delhi director S Sivakumar may lose his post at ILI if his experience teaching PG courses in law, as a full time lecturer, is found wanting by the High Court (HC) of Delhi.

Delhi HC judges SK Kaul and Inderneet Kaur asked Sivakumar to furnish records of his teaching experience, within three weeks, after ILI’s executive committee validated his appointment despite right to information (RTI) replies from NUJS Kolkata and KLA Trivandrum disputing his claim that his teaching experience at those colleges made him eligible for the post at ILI.

The bench said:

This in our view is a serious matter as there may be an element of perjury either on behalf of KLA or on behalf of the director. We call upon him to file an affidavit setting out which is the date when he joined KLA and what courses he taught and for which period. [TOI]

As NLSIU Bangalore students are due to meet the administration on Sunday about the extension of a campus curfew after an alleged rape in October, the student bar association (SBA) has proposed legal amendments to the Justice Verma Committee on women’s safety.

Breaking: The Bar Council of India (BCI) today retracted its 5 January request to the administrators of all Indian law schools to reserve at least two seats in each course for BCI nominees.

Breaking: The Bar Council of India (BCI) has sent a letter to the administrators of all Indian law schools, asking them to reserve two places on each course for BCI nominees.

AIL Mohali first year students organised a fundraiser under the banner “stop the shame”, in collaboration with the All India Women’s Conference (AIWC) , in Chandigarh on 25 December.

Kudrat Dutta Chaudhary, Madhvi Sandhu, Nimisha Menon, Arundhati Mishra and Manik Gupta organised a two part fundraiser – a street play, and a corporate drive – aiming to distribute 1000 free-of-cost pepper sprays among the underprivileged working women in Chandigarh, also teaching them the proper use of the spray for self-defense.

Around 30 students participated in the drive on 25 December when the street play was staged thrice. The play also included self-defense techniques demonstrated by a professional boxer amongst the participating students.

The organisers will now initiate the corporate fundraising drive, to meet the gap after the donations from the play. Chaudhary told Legally India that the subsidised scheme under which they will be purchasing the pepper sprays, each small-sized spray will cost them Rs 150, instead of the regular rate of Rs 200.

She said: “Since we’re living in Mohali, all of us [the organisers] have faced the situation of eve-teasing some time or the other. Mohali is a very unsafe place. It so happened that we learnt the correct use of pepper sprays by spraying ourselves.” [Facebook page for the drive]

NUJS Kolkata gets socio-astro palmist Nemai Bannerjee as its latest executive committee member after a recommendation by West Bengal chief minister (CM) Mamata Banerjee for his appointment.

Bannerjee had predicted the CM’s landslide victory in the 2011 assembly elections, as well as Indira Gandhi’s assassination on 31 October 1984. [TOI]

Eight months-old NLUO Cuttack vice chancellor (VC) Dr Chandra Krishnamurthy will join as Pondicherry University’s (PU) VC this week, replacing Dr JAK Tareen.

The search committee that selected Krishnamurthy at PU comprised of North Maharashtra University ex-vice chancellor Dr RS Mali, Jawaharlal Nehru University Delhi ex-vice chancellor prof GK Chadha and Anna University Tamil Nadu ex-vice chancellor prof M Anadakrishnan. [New Indian Express]

Krishnamurthy was appointed NLUO’s VC on 30 April, after her tenure as VC at SNDT Women’s University Mumbai ended. The post of NLUO’s VC was vacated after former VC Faizan Mustafa resigned mid-tenure to join Nalsar Hyderabad as VC.

In July Krishnamurthy scrapped the three-year joint LLM-PhD degree programme which was started by Mustafa in 2011, compelling one of the two enrolled students to discontinue instruction at the university in the middle of the academic year.

RMLNLU Lucknow vice chancellor (VC) Balraj Chauhan will finish his five-year tenure as VC at the university on 2 January. The university has formed a search committee to appoint the new VC, and has invited applications for the post latest by Monday.

Exclusive: The High Court of Allahabad chastised RMLNLU Lucknow’s administration for its ill-handling of disciplinary proceedings against its student - late Sahil Zaidi, who suffered an unnatural death in his final year, during the pendency of the proceedings two years after they were initiated against him.

NLSIU Bangalore authorities yesterday issued a warning to students’ parents that they would not tolerate any resistance or protests from students against the newly-imposed 9pm curfew that had been instated on campus on 27 November.

Students of NLIU Bhopal organised a run to show support for the victims of year 1984’s Bhopal Gas Tragedy on 2 December, through their student-run organisation People United for Law, Education and Rehabilitation (PULER).

PULER partnered with rehabilitation organisation Rajeev Smriti Gas Peedit Punarwaas Kendra (RSGPP) to organise the event a day before the anniversary on which citizens of the city commemorate the victims of the tragedy.

The 7 km run saw around 1000 participants mostly from Bhopal schools and colleges. Another part to the event included a poster-making competition for school-going children on 25 November. All activities were arranged by over 100 student volunteers of the law school, according to a press statement from the organisers.

NUJS Kolkata professor Shamnad Basheer, who is the HRD ministry’s chair professor for intellectual property, argued over two days in his first-of-its-kind academic intervention in the landmark Novartis-Glivec patent hearing in the Supreme Court.

Swiss drug maker Novartis had approached the SC in September when it was refused a patent for cancer drug Glivec which is sold by India’s generic drug makers to reportedly 1.2 billion Indians and to poorer nations across the world.

Basheer argued before justices Aftab Alam and Ranjana Desai that even though Novartis didn’t satisfy the test to patent Glivec, excessive pricing can also not be a ground to revoke a patent. [Spicy IP]

In August, pharma company Natco had filed for defamation against Basheer in the Delhi high court, claiming that its reputation was harmed by Basheer’s comments in his entry in SpicyIP on the company’s ongoing legal battle.

The Bar Council of India extended the deadline for submission of the application form for the now postponed 9 December AIBE.

The notification for postponement of the AIBE to 9 December now reads:

It is to notify that, due to unavoidable reason, Muharram and several requests received from candidates, the date of All India Bar Examination is extended to 9th December, 2012. The Exam would now be held on 9th December, 2012. Accordingly, last date for submission of application form and deposit of examination fee is also extended upto 15th November, 2012 and last date for receipt of duly filled in application form in the office of the Bar Council of India is extended upto 20th November, 2012. It is clarified that in no case application forms received in the office of the Bar Council of India after 20th November, 2012 be accepted. [BCI]

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