I think JNU CSLG has always been an attractive place though it tends to have more than just lawyers in its PhD cohorts. Very competitive too and the interviews are not always satisfactory. You think you did well when reality is that they have their own interests and its less about you being rigorous and more about whether they can make you a part of their project.

Then why do they falsely advertise the number of vacancies that they do not intend to fill in the first place? They should only advertise 1 or 2 seats if that is all they are looking to fill instead of making applicants sit through a complex admission process spanning months with long, essay-style exams, followed by even longer interviews, only to end up rejecting them because of factors that have nothing to do with an applicant's performance.

In that case, please write to NLUD asking them to amend his profile which says otherwise << https://nludelhi.ac.in/faculty/dr-daniel-mathew/ >>.

Thanks but every one of those posts is so generalised that it ends up creating more confusion than before on just what exactly is it that is being done wrong at NLSIU to its research scholars. I hoped you could elaborate but since you are concerned for your privacy (I fully respect that), I understand and appreciate your decision to share whatever you could.

By the way, and please respond only if you are comfortable, why does NLSIU select so few in its PhD programme while leaving more than half of its advertised vacancies unfilled? Last year alone, they only took 1 our of 4 vacancies in law and 2 out of 3 vacancies in the interdisciplinary stream? Is this normal? Or is there a crisis somewhere?

Since you asked, here it is in a nutshell.

- Frequent cha be on PhD regulations

-Frequent change of doctoral committee, with each committee having their own way of running things

-Supervisors being too busy and not providing any feedback on time

- Massive backlog of people pursuing PhD, some from 2014 and 15

There are other systemic issues, but I don't wanna dox myself. Check the other discussions on NLS PhD on Legally India.

Vinod Kumar, Daniel Mathew, Srikrishna Deva Rao, Anup Surendranath, Amita Punj are some of them though I am not familiar with all of their work. Since according to a recent thread on this forum, Anup has retired from NLUD, hence he may be excluded from consideration here. At the same time, NLUD has Center for Human Rights and Subaltern Studies and Project 39A is expected to have an office at the university to continue its work. Given the broad nature of academic inquiry that can be conducted under the rubric of human rights, it may also be helpful to consider that there are also other centres with allied interest in human rights, like Centre for Linguistic Justice and Endangered Languages, Centre for Criminology and Victimology,

Centre for Labour Law Research and Advocacy, Centre for Studies in Disability and Law, Centre for Law, Justice and Development, Centre for Constitutional Law, Policy and Governance, Centre for Environment Law, Policy and Research, Centre for Transparency and Accountability in Governance.
========================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================

The aforementioned information is available publicly and I would not presume to consider myself an authority on the kind of work that is presently being done at NLUD on human rights. However, on first glance, the range of work and the multiplicity of convergent centres operating together does appear to indicate, in general, a vibrant intellectual community at the university.

If you do not mind, could you please consider sharing your reasons for it? It would truly be appreciated given how little information is available to outsiders and prospective students when they decide to apply to a particular institution. In general, NLSIU checks all the boxes. Hence, it would be extremely helpful if you could share your perspective in detail. Thanks.

I do not have a lot of tips for you, I am afraid, other than asking you to go through the basic textbook for each subject, make detailed case lists and solve as many mocks as you can. JRF also requires a luck factor. However, with regard to your PhD issue, I can tell you that several top NLUs, including NLSIU, NALSAR, NUJS and NLUD offer University Research Fellowships to some of their PhD students, which are monetarily equivalent to the JRF. Other NLUs may also offer those, I know for certain that these four do. Given that you have already cleared NET, you just need to come up with a robust proposal and clear their interviews. You will have to do occasional university work other than your own research, but it is not a bad deal overall. You may give it a try.