Tensions have been high on campus since the last trimester, as the SBA and the University have been engaged in a constant fight. There was a big protest last trimester. 135/137 student representatives resigned, indicting the VC for his behaviour with student representatives, which includes making some of the students cry in their meetings with him. A lot of posters were put up across the campus, and students even occupied common spaces like the Old Academic Block and the Field till 12 midnight on different days. The faculty had to finally intervene and three joint committees were made with students, faculty, and one administrative member, on them. Even though so many students told the SBA to not stop the protest, since it's a way for them to calm us down for now, the cowardly SBA insisted on running a clean protest, and decided not to go to the media, etc, for fear of escalating the protest.

The committees (Academics, Campus life, and Residence Life: issues of space and access on campus), had given their recommendations over the September break. A lot of these recommendations have been straight up rejected by the VC, ▮▮▮. He has disregarded his own faculty and administrative members that gave these recommendations. Rumour is that the VC is unhappy with a lot of these faculty and administrative members since they did not stand up to the students whose sole purpose is to malign his image as a fantastic administrator.

For instance, Gate 0 of the campus was asked to be open till 12 AM since a lot of students had faced sexual harassment (with one professor also placing on record their experience of harassment!) on the path outside the college, allowing for easier access into college. The University has simply rejected this saying that they are “reviewing financial and other administrative constraints” before Gate 0 timing could be increased.

To pretend that the University wants to implement the rest of the recommendations, he has attached impossible conditions on the SBA. The committees had recommended that the Library and New Academic Block classrooms should be open till 3 AM since there are no spaces for students to study and socialise after midnight. Even though he keeps getting one big corporate grant after another (wonder where the Infosys and JSW money is going!), the VC has asked the SBA to pay money that will be required in keeping these spaces open, like infrastructure and security requirements (like installing CCTV’s) on the SBA. If only our stupid SBA had realised as everyone from the student body had told them that this whole thing was a sham, and was never going to work! But no, they asked us to believe in these sham committees that the university had no intention of ever following in good faith.

Even more petty things that were recommended, like removing the 500 rupees entry fine for coming to campus late after the beginning of the trimester, have not been implemented. There was no logic for penalising students for not coming on the first day on campus since they already lose their attendance, and sometimes students have internships that they cannot just leave and come.The Chief Warden, Chief Operating Officer, and the former registrar all recognised this, and suggested the removal of the fine. However, the University in its wisdom has basically told them to shut up, and instead proposed a 500 rupee daily fine, instead of 500 as a whole!

They are also directly retaliating against the student body now. It’s so obvious with the bs reasons they are giving. They have taken away everything they call “discretionary services”; backtracking on paying for physiotherapy for disabled students, pulling money for hostel events, stopping funding for buses to the airport at the end of trimester, etc.. They have even reduced the frequency of room cleaning because students “don’t show enough gratitude”. How dare we ask to be treated with basic respect! And how dare we think that SBA would fight the admin to give the respect we deserve!

One of the SBA Co-Presidents had shared some incorrect information on an internal, student WhatsApp Group about how the VC had apparently called NUJS and asked them to go ahead with Trilateral without NLSIU. He deleted it almost immediately after posting it, as he learned that the information is false from a NUJS student representative. Apparently, the VC had merely indicated NLSIU might not be able to make it for Trilaterals and to consider having an inter NLU instead of having only 3 NLU’s participate.

For this small error, however, the Co-President was show-caused, and effectively forced to resign. So much for all of his good faith. In his own words from the resignation email: “I had started my tenure with a rather optimistic vision in my mind. I was of the opinion that all that was needed for the SBA to achieve its goals was to build a culture of mutual trust between the student body and the university. In hindsight, it was a rather reductive view of things. I genuinely believed in the idea that building a mutual trust between the SBA and the university will go a long way in ensuring that students' interests are heard and respected. I always believed in being reasonable with the requests that I ever put forth and balancing the interests and perspectives of the students and the university. I also sincerely believed in the need for the students to take accountability for their actions. I was certain that doing what was right without thinking twice would eventually result in the SBA getting the respect it deserves, both from the university and the student body. However, as I end my tenure with my resignation, I am completely hopeless and frustrated. I laugh at the misconceptions and wrong assumptions that I held.”

They are also directly retaliating against the student body now. It’s so obvious with the bs reasons they are giving. They have taken away everything they call “discretionary services”; backtracking on paying for physiotherapy for disabled students, pulling money for hostel events, stopping funding for buses to the airport at the end of trimester, etc.. They have even reduced the frequency of room cleaning because students “don’t show enough gratitude”.

Everyday is a new low... Thank you admin🙏

Sudhir is an esteemed scholar and the best administrator among all NLU VCs. The students must trust in his ability to run the university in the manner that he deems fit, if NLSIU is to assume truly global standards. Instead students pulling such stunts only goes to show that they are not being driven hard enough, thus rendering their minds idle and suitable workshops for the Devil. Law School students and alumni are firmly behind Sudhir and not anonymous trolls.

Then the NLS as you knew it couldn't have been a very good place to study at. It now focuses on real quality, not pandering to a handful of faculty to get soft electives and easy grades. It does real research now, not merely the fraudulent paper tiger of centres set up during Venky's time.

Come come Sudhir old boy, if this is true, we're just getting a bit petty here now, aren't we? Make them read Hart and Fuller, Dworkin and Raz, Plato and Aristotle all you want, introduce loads more of academic research-focussed public law courses (the more the merrier) - full support for that, as you know - introduce an Oxbridge/Russell Group-style tutorial system, keep up the academic rigour all you like, even create a version of the Oxbridge college system. All great, actually. But this? If true (which cannot be taken for granted until more proof is produced)... this is not great my friend.

Jist of VC's actions

1. No action on employees for mentally and physically harrassing students. Employees have used casteist, sexist language. Students have complained multiple times- No enquiry

2. Admin thanking such employees.

3. Admin accessing whatsapp chats of student representatives

4.Closing down spaces on campus in name of sexual harassment. A reason which even UGC has spoken against.
5. Raids in hostels without any due process.

6. Schooling couples on campus for PDAs

7. VC ignoring Students Representatives and talking to them very rudely when the come with serious concerns

8. No campus life. No cultural fest. No sports fest. Everything has to be shut at 9PM.
9. Even library cannot be open post 12, coz sexual harassment and no staff.

10. Meaningless expenditure on stupid aesthetics of campus while curbing down expenditure on student welfare.

11. Increase of fees from around 1 lakh in 2019 to 4.2 LPA in 2024. (More fees than Amity Law School)

Most of these 'grievances' seem childish and stem from highly skewed and distorted views about how elite universities are supposed to function, as aired by juvenile student minds.

Of the serious issues voiced, if the admin isn't taking action against any employee for any law that they have broken, as you hinted at, then why aren't the victims filing formal complaints about such employees outside the university to concerned authorities? Are you really law students?

These are your big civil rights issues ? Keeping the gate open past midnight ? Socialising in the library till 3 am ? Honestly why should anyone take you seriously. People need to be paid and need to be available to work all those hours for those things to happen. Have y’all considered how your behaviour impacts others ?

Busses to the airport ? Has the BMTC shut down all of a sudden ? How spoiled are y’all ?

Physiotherapists on campus ? I cannot think of a single other NLU or heck university where such things are made available at university cost.

Students genuinely in need should get extra insurance that pays for it. Most universities only have very limited first aid stations and maybe an ambulance to ferry sick students to a hospital. It’s not a spa.

Honestly none of these demands seem reasonable or moderate or even necessary. We have all gone to law school and had none of these things and been fine. You do not need to socialise in the library till 3 am. Borrow books and study in your room. You can be like students across the country and use public transport. Get your own physiotherapist. These absolutely are luxuries and any university seeking to build and grow should cut back on costs responsibly where possible. Do you think JSW and Infosys gave money for you to socialise in the library past midnight ? And if money from their grants had been spent on nonsense like this do you think they would give again? I’m pretty sure all spending by university is made public- you can just look that up. Not to mention funding organisations actually do usually demand accountability from the orgs they fund.

Many parts of this are simply not true. No one was made to cry by the VC. A student with poor mental health got emotional while speaking to him and burst into tears. That’s not the same thing. Why should anyone believe any of this nonsense ?

This website is extremely irresponsible for continuing to post unverified one sided twaddle about the VC. It’s basically just defamation at this point. He seems to be the one punching bag the mods can’t get enough of. It’s sick. You’re not the revolution. You’re the spoilt little brat who thinks losing privileges is like losing rights and who lies constantly and truly thinks he can get away with it. But we’re all done with that now. If you want to be revolutionaries write your concerns in your own name. Write a petition and make it public. After all of the things you’re asking for are so reasonable and the VC such a bad guy, you wouldn’t lose your reputation by putting your name to these things?Until then there is zero credibility to any of this shitkicking.

Can we actually settle this matter of which generation Sudhir belongs to? You classify him as Gen X, while previously he has been called "Gen Y autocrat". Of all things, this seems like quite a silly discrepency. So let's get an answer: to which generation does he belong? Assuming he was 18 when he entered NLSIU as an undergrad, that would mean he was 18 in 1993, and 23 in 1998, when he first went to Oxford. That would mean he was born in 1975.

Fully agree. These are delusional and juvenile behaviour. Sudhir may not be an ideal individual or administrator from every possible angle, but these are just hogwash. The sheer level of entitlement displayed here by trolls is astonishing. Better get real students who are ready to work hard to reach somewhere in life. CLAT is just bringing in the wrong crowd these days.

My poor fool, please study your issues properly. See what has happened in societies where they haven't tried raising fees. Take United Kingdom as textbook example. They have had a model of tuition fees whereby the absolute, hard, impossible-to-get-around maximum that a British uni could charge home students for any undergraduate course was £9,250 per year (the Labour administration in power is raising to £9,500). This was called the 'cap' on tuition fees. This amount of 9,250 was set in 2012, and remained constant until now (the fees for international students were not regulated like this). Now obviously, £9,250 in 2012 is much higher value than £9,250 in 2024. Do you know what that resulted in? It has resulted in a rediculous situation where the typical UK uni loses something like £2,300 for every British student it admits onto an undergraduate programme. Does this sound familiar to you? I would assume not. If the tuition fees hadn't been frozen, by one estimate, Brits/those who had resided there long enough to get Indefinite Leave to Remain and were studying at undergrad level would be paying £12,000 by now, if the fees had been allowed to rise in line with inflation. Do you know instead what has happened? Of course you don't, because you have no curiosity! What has happened is the Mamas and Papas of UK schoolchildren are inundated with headlines in their morning copies of Financial Times, Times of London etc about some unis having less than 30 days of liquidity, about "potential market exits" (which is the official Government regulator Office for Students (OfS) terminology for unis closing down) because of something like a 10% drop in applications from British kids (i.e., 10% fewer Brits want to go to university) and something like 23% less from overseas students, and of leaks of talks between VCs and ministers about mergers, course closures and so on. Do you think Sudhir might know all this? Do you think he might have just possibly, unlike you, read the expert commentary on matters of this kind written by people such as Sir David Behan and Sir Phillip Augar, the banker, both of whom have been in the leadership of the Office for Students (or maybe even just the Financial Times)? Possibly, do you think he might be on first name terms ("Philip" and "David" terms) with these two people who have given UK HE sector funding some thought, considering his own extended time in England? And do you think he may have just used his knowledge/connections to good effect, evaluated what he has learned about how other HE systems work/how things can go wrong/have gone wrong and made his decisions? You clearly have done none of these things, because from your comment, clearly you know nothing about higher education or how these things have worked. Why don't you study in more detail what I have described, study the Indian economy more closely and then express an opinion?

If only I had my eyesight and didn't have to use a screen reader to operate my computer, I would be able to use emojis; in that event, I would have responded to this comment with at least 10 applause emojis. Mad respect for whoever wrote this! By standing up for the truth, you have done Indian legal education a service.

Lol. You talk as if the University is barely surviving on funds and that the services we are asking for are in excess. The college has increased the fees by lacs in the last few years. Having services that protect student from sexual harassment outside the campus, some funding or attendance for students representing the University is the bare minimum that any law college should be providing

Have you notice them building stuff maybe? Have you noticed that all the new people need copies of books in the library and classrooms to sit in and that new teachers need to be hired to teach y’all ? That’s where the money is going! Every adult understands that when you’re building something you should try and be austere with discretionary expenses !

To the ignorant people who are criticising the students and defending Sudhir — please educate yourself before commenting. The students are NOT spoilt snowflakes and are NOT making unreasonable demands. You all know nothing of the ground situation. Everything is a woke tantrum in your eyes!! Please understand that other colleges give the same facilities.

Nls also has a health centre where a nurse is available and a doctor during working hours. So at least on that count - y’all are getting the same thing. A physiotherapist is a different type of ask.

I’m extremely surprised that those are library timings anywhere. I think it’s very unnecessary . We have all been students when libraries shut at 6pm. I promise it’s not actually going to impact your studies to sit in your room rather than sit in the library. A midnight closing time is very reasonable.

People also used to study fine before mobile phones were invented. Should we ban them in campus now since they werent required in the 90s? If tomorrow Sudhir cuts off wifi will that be your justification?
We exist to move forward, to enhance our facilities, not hold on to your own "golden ages". Im pretty sure your ancestors used to study by the lamp. Why bother taking an electric connection. Did you invent studying? How about you take out the good ol' kerosene lantern and burn the midnight oil.

Moving forward does not mean that other people will bear the brunt of your lack of discipline or your whims. Which library remains open throughout the night in the entire country? There is no adverse effect on studying if you do that in your room at night and at the library during the day. All your databases are remotely accessible. This is just entitlement speaking. You want to have a private library open 24/7, build your own.

Yes except there’s no real reason to think keeping the library open all night is actually necessary to improve how people learn. More of everything is not necessarily growth. Sometimes it can be waste.

If students were asking for subscriptions to journals or software that does qualitative or quantitative analysis or anything like that most people would support it. This isn’t like that.

Don't often visit Legally India but have been looking at the petty fighting and the comments on this thread with some amusement. Let me give you my perspective - I have no skin in the game.

1. I am a blind person. I study law in a western country at a university generally considered among the desirable destinations for anyone wishing to study law, whether at undergraduate or postgraduate level. Not perhaps Harvard or Oxford type "desirable", but say the next level after that.

2. My institutional library, which, obviously, as a law student, I use a lot, operates on a 24/7 basis. It has pretty good infra, all the usual database subscriptions etc. Sounds pretty sweet? Just one caveat: all the staff with the actual expert knowledge on how to operate the technical systems, be it photocopying devices, scanners or printers, or librarians who can actually help you if you aren't doing a very good job of going about finding readings you need to be finding/those are hard to find or help you resolve small technicalities with databases, leave by 8pm on week days and come in on very reduced hours on weekends, leaving the helpdesks manned by security guards who have hash technical knowledge.

3. As a blind person, I tend to prefer using a quiet space in our library, so I use our Assistive Technology Room (or ATR as we sometimes call it), a quite room with limited ID card access which only disabled students are allowed into, so that I can use screen-reader-enabled computer without headphones.

4. I think the library's very flexible timings are useful for people that may not have very positive learning environments in other places (many private accommodation halls are pretty bad in terms of noise, for example, and my uni doesn't allow people to stay in institutional halls beyond a point).

5. I, personally, have never used the library beyond 8pm. Just see no need. My disability means I am exempted from being disallowed halls. Personally, I have found halls to be as conducive to studying/revising/essay writing/planning or whatever as the library (though I must admit that most accommodation buildings here have single rooms, unlike the situation at NLS, per my understanding), except when there is construction or maintenance work going on there (thankfully not too often). I have always thought that if there are things I need/want to do in person in the library which I may need help with (e.g., sometimes I have to print, scan and edit PDFs of some journal articles which come as firewall protected, which make my screen reader go heywire), better to do it when someone who can actually help is around. As for my sighted friends, I have a good number of these and know enough people in my cohort to think it's a representative sample size, nobody that I know sits around in the library for that long either. In fact, on days when there are fewer classes, I know folks who don't bother with the library at all, and use either their accommodation or home spaces to study. The thing is, with a strong collection of EBooks held within an internal library repository, journal and database subscriptions, you actually end up "using the library" wherever it is that you are studying, and doing what people do in libraries (reading, thinking and writing) wherever you are. If I couldn't find something I was looking for and had made sure to leave no stone unturned to find it, I'd just use email to ask for help, not go in person unless I actually was in the library already.

While I don't know the nuts and bolts of the NLS situation, I do think this conversation has been lacking some nuance. Hope this perspective helps some.

I'm not disabled, but I am also at a foreign university that has excellent name recognition. The library is open till 1 am, sometimes 3 am—exam week; you could technically sit there. But the staff only stays until 5 PM if that. And more severely limited hours during breaks. Only study groups would use the library with regularity; the rest of us study in our rooms or elsewhere on campus; its quieter in the rooms anyway. I only go to the library to photocopy or scan readings for classes. The fact is they would likely not have the library open even past working hours if they didn't have money to hire someone to guard and watch, and students weren't very respectful and professional. It would be unheard of for anyone here to damage a book and not take responsibility for it. And sections of the library have quiet rules anyway, so you cannot socialise there; just study in silence.

NLS' policy doesn't seem too strict to me. A midnight curfew is perfectly reasonable. You also want your students to work efficiently during daylight hours and not work through the night every night.

For all those who are talking about how Sudhir is right in all this and that the students demands are to spoiled, it's not about the demands itself or the services that we are asking for. It's the fact so many of the services that we had access to before have been taken back just out of spite. Not for some grand scheme of making NLS better but simply to beef with students half his age. Plus i have no idea how having literally everyone including students, teacher and the administration hating him will help him achieve anything whatsoever or whatever this dream he has of NLS. That has literally never worked in the history of universities.

If everyone thinks, as you claim, that he is in the wrong, then why aren't they (including you) taking legal action against him, or doing protests, or filing complaints with the Executive Council or the Chancellor? The only answer to that is no matter how much you claim otherwise, most people believe that he is being tough, but doing the right thing.

Lee Kuan Yew was the prime minister of Singapore from about 1959 to 1990. He was re-elected every time there were Singaporean elections between that timeframe, but I cannot answer with any degree of reliability as to his popularity with the people of Singapore of that generation. However, he was tough and did the following (among other things):

- Threatened to shut down Singapore Airlines if their pilots didn't call off a strike.

- While some may argue overreacting, a ban was passed in Singapore of chewing gum because someone stuck it in a metro door hinge which caused the door to jam, the train to get stuck and lots of delays on the entire network.

- Housing Development Board (HDB) housing lifts were fitted with an alarm system ordered by Mr Lee that made the lift stop if somebody inside urinated on the floor (as many did do ). This would mean that they would have to ring their flat's security/maintenance to be rescued, and therefore would be shamed into admitting this conduct.

As far as I can see, tough though it may be to swallow, Sudhir is being the NLSIU equivalent of Mr Lee. The comparisons are uncanny! Both are in positions of authority; both are lawyers; both lived in England for at least some time in their lives; both did very well in law school (Sudhir at NLS and Oxford, Lee Kuan Yew at Cambridge); both adopt a "cut the comedy" approach to life. If that means that some agenda-supporting or bitter student/member of academic staff within NLSIU is disgruntled and doesn't have the balls to conduct protest, there is no need to pay anymore attention to this.

University admin also thinks it's fine to violate students' privacy. They responded to some other communication made by one of the SBA Presidents on an internal student group on WhatsApp with an official email??? Accusing them of misinformation?? And then the Co-Presidents as well as many students replied pointing out that there was no misinformation and then the admin went dead silent and has been ignoring all follow-ups.

how did they violate privacy? did they hack into your phones? know their tech capabilities, they couldnt hack through a thick fog. Clearly someone shared those messages with the admin and that is how they came to know. If you are writing stuff on big whatsapp groups you should assume zero privacy. The university is not required to look the other way when folks are spreading rumours to sew discontent. I mean- clearly they already do because youre posting here, but they can ask students why theyre doing this. Perhaps admin isnt buying your attempts to weasel your way out by minimising and rationalising your own behaviour.

It seems that the university is desperately trying to create a rift between the student body and its representatives. They want us to blame student reps for how the protests turned out, and distract us from the fact that they have been acting in bad faith throughout. I don’t think we should fall into that trap!

They claim to want transparency and “foster open communication” but the VC won’t even have an open house.

Idiot, Sudhir isn't Lord Curzon. For his intellectual satisfaction, he doesn't need divide et impera. He is an established scholar and teacher. Tomorrow, if he decides to get in touch with C. Rajkumar because he has had enough, he can easily go to a place which pays him better (even if the students are equally toxic). And like Mohsin Bhatt, Jindal could easily be the lever to get some heavy and difficult-to-move doors open for a path to British academia (in his case back to British academia); TBH, we'd be happy to take him back, and could ourselves do with his type - his "cut-through-the-crap" way of working/personality is exactly what wee need (like you, but for different reasons).

All the demands are, as people have pointed out, completely unrealistic and nonsensical, but one stands out as worse than others.

Room cleaning, of all things!? Do you know how surprised people from the world's best universities would be to hear you saying this? Their response would be 'Why do you want to operate your uni like Oxford of 1890?'. Those universities (and their associated accommodation providers) make students do cleaning of rooms and cooking themselves (and charge additionally if students want meal plans or whatever). I have myself studied for an extended period in one such institution with access to a friendship/contact network in analogous places, and the most the admins do is to arrange for cleaning of common areas and kitchens within hostels. I have found this good enough for me and have faced no need to pay additional charges for someone to cook my meals for me or to clean my room, I see no reason why it shouldn't work for you too! As far as I can see, all Sudhir is doing is to align his uni with global best practices - which, BTW, remember, he has had sustained exposure to - so you will have to decide: do you want your institution to operate like the global best or not? This is liberalism of 21st century, Indian best law students can't even clean their own rooms? Come on! You will be flattened in even a mediocre western environment - where you will have to cook, clean, wash up your own dishes and do your own laundry, as well as study, get good marks and get a job! Nobody is going to give you a free pass for any of this! Why do you take the best uni for law in India for granted?

PS: And BTW, even the global best don't have physiotherapy on staff! They have administrators whose job is to refer students for these kinds of things (as and when required!).

He does teach. Granted, he doesn't publish much. But what he has published is of significant quality. His first book was published by OUP, and I think a second was published by Cambridge UP. That is a lot more than anything you, a person who has clearly failed law school third year at least once, have ever achieved. So please shut up, achieve the 'best graduating student' title from NLSIU, achieve the Rhodes, do the BCL at Oxford and get a distinction in it, do the MPhil in Oxford and get a distinction in that too, then do either the Oxford DPhil or the Cambridge/LSE PhD, publish books with OUP and CUP yourself (or if not with them, then with Harvard UP, MIT Press, Bristol Uni Press etc.) and then come back and lecture us about peoples' publication records. Oh yes, you won't be able to do any of this, because you have already failed at least two subjects, so nothing for any of us who have common sense in the world to worry about!

Could it be that the bad quality of CLAT 2024 ended up selecting masses of mediocres into NLS. And since there's more of them than earlier (2024 increased seats big time), bo'29 is having more weight in the discourse. And therefore, the SBA is under pressure to kowtow to this group? Like the local politician who panders to populist demands of numerically larger groups in exchange for the gaddi?

And hence (absence of) room cleaning, physiotherapy and buses to airport are the top revolutionary ideas that's agitating NLS?

Some of the issues voiced, if true, are indeed a matter of concern, such as eviction from the hostel without due process, committees functioning without student representatives, removal of mental health support etc. I have supported Sudhir in general for the good work that he's been doing at NLSIU, but surely these are not matters with which the VC should concern himself? He's got so many good people at NLSIU now, why not delegate these internal matters to some of their very capable hands and use his time to keep doing the constructive things that he's been doing like drawing good collaboration, funding, faculty, research and rankings? I mean, surely he's got his hands full doing all of that, so why try to micro manage everything? No one person was meant to solve all of these issues. Rather, frame rules and practices and delegate to deans, registrars and faculty. He's got the only NLU alumnus registrar in the entire country, can't he let Nigam decide hostel and disciplinary issues?