NUJS Kolkata vice chancellor Prof Ishwara Bhat, who had been offered the same job at CNLU Patna, has resigned today, after the students’ ultimatum calling for his resignation expired at 9am today.
In his resignation letter, Bhat cites “health and family reasons” for his resignation, which will take effect from 7 April 2018.
His resignation and the student protests follow NUJS students having unearthed the long-buried and long-overdue statutory review commission report of NUJS, which contained scathing criticism of NUJS’ decline under Bhat’s administration.
The Student Juridical Association (SJA) had called for a “passive” protest, which they said would not jeopardise their academic careers or the right to work of any faculty members, while students also started a Facebook page including memes and videos of their protest.
Final day of protests crescendos
NUJS students were seen chanting slogans of “Ishwara Bhat go away” in English and “Ishwara Bhat Jaldi Hat” (Ishwara Bhat, move out fast) in Hindi while sitting out at the campus gates flashing colourful protest posters, after protests ramped up today as the ultimatum had expired in the morning, according to live footage on the Facebook page “NUJS Speaks”.
Presumably prepared to continue the protest until Bhat’s resignation, they titled the live footage of the protest as “Day Zero”.
One faculty member was seen addressing the protesting students in footage recorded five hours ago, and telling them their protest “is going to harm the university” and that “the email [the SJA] sent yesterday was uncouth and every such communication you write is going to harm the interest of the university much more than any of us and incompetence of any of us”, before he informed the audience that Bhat had tendered his resignation before the executive council.
Students pressed the faculty member for a written assurance of the fact of Bhat’s resignation, in response to which the faculty member insisted that the protesters were “mistaken” that they were protecting the interest of the university “by blocking the way, not allowing us to carry on with our work”, and that they “must give everyone a way out”.
To which the students shouted back slogans of “Band Karo ye saajedari ab toh le lo zimmedari” (Stop colluding and take responsibility now at least) in Hindi.
Ghosts of future past, in Cal and Patna
Of course, with Bhat’s resignation, NUJS will face the challenge of finding a new vice chancellor (VC), and as this administrative law exam question at NLSIU Bangalore rightly pointed out (quoting our earlier report), VC talent is thin on the ground.
CNLU Patna, meanwhile will be facing a similar problem. The school received an acting VC, retired Justice Mridula Mishra, after Bhat’s appointment had hung in limbo after CNLU students’ protests, while former similarly unpopular VC A Lakshminath had left the campus on 24 March.
Muted student protests in Patna are understood to be continuing, as CNLU’s chancellor has not given an official position on whether Bhat’s appointment as VC will be stayed or not.
According to student sources, the chancellor has refused to give an official statement on any of the protesting students’ demands while they were continuing with the administrative lockdown, so the students have decided to wait before ramping up the protests until the second week of April. Students have also demanded the constitution of its four-year overdue statutory university review commission.
Video of students’ victory announcement and celebrations
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Video of protests
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Protests unfoisted (in slow mo)
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Hounding down a man to his home and intimidating him into signing a resignation. Is that how you win?
Publicly defaming a man without ever laying down the particulars of the sexual harassment claims against him. Is that how you win?
The way the NUJS student body behaves, they will be after the new VC's head from the first day of his tenure. That's just how the students are. They cry for competence, but when they get competent teachers like KR, they complain about the teacher being after their lives. And of course, when a teacher is lax, the students will laugh at the teacher for being a fool.
When you have eyes designed to see problems only in others and not in you, no one is ever going to make you happy.
1. Hounded to his home - When you shout and cry for a man to be forcibly kicked out of an institution along the lines of "Ishwara Bhat, jaldi hat", what do you do? You force him to remain in any safe place he can find which includes his home. Then you call him repeatedly with only one demand - "you resign". There is no negotiation, the only thing you want is his head. Then even after you get the resignation, you don't let the man live in peace. You go down to his home and get a formal resignation face to face from a man who already must be broken because of the hatred you have unleashed against him. I don't see anything of honour in that.
2. Allegations of sexual harassment- You can't jump to conclusions and say that allegations are fact. Do you know the repercussions if an innocent man is discharged of his duties just because there were allegations? Would you want to have it on your conscience to ruin an innocent man's career and life? What I heard from the faculty was that the allegations were not found to be substantial in at least one case. You cannot say that the 'creep ' you don't like is conclusively guilty based just on some of your friend's opinions.
3. On girls feeling unsafe on campus - What exactly could have Bhat done? You have guards and railings and barbed wire protecting you from the outside world. I don't know what more security measures can be added to what is already in place. You can't pin responsibility on a person for incidents which have nothing to do with him just because you think he is a suitable scapegoat.
As for the allegations of harassment, nobody is saying those are facts, but to determine how much is fact and how much isn't, you need to have prompt investigations and inquiry. That's what he never did. Hundreds of discipline related problems, many violence related matters, harassment issues remain unaddressed under his reign and even those on which inquires start, they drag on for ever and documents keep getting mysteriously misplaced or lost.
As for the safety issue, again, don't make me laugh. There have been regular complaints for the past 5 years at least about the inefficiency and downright negligence and insensitivity of the guard agency currently employed (to say nothing of lack of training or effectiveness of those people). He refused to do anything to improve upon it, refused to train those people or get better ones. Safety and fire audits of the campus have never been carried out for God knows how long. I have seen girl students come crying to him after getting molested or harassed by outsiders illegally present inside campus and all he did was provide empty reassurances over and over again and not do a single thing about these issues, rather choosing to focus on installing CCTVs inside classrooms! It broke my heart to see those students keep hoping that what happened with them would at least make the authorities take cognisance of the problem and try to address it to the best of their ability, and see their hopes dashed again and again.
So you see, the problem is not a single one, but the collective picture. Is PIB responsible for everything that's wrong now? No. Could he have done something to improve most of them? Yes. Could he have shown empathy to the students and assure them effectively that he wants to find solutions to those problems working together with them? Definitely. Did he do any of that? Hell, no! Of course faculty members wish the students did not have to do this. Of course they are not happy they were denied entry into the campus. But could they have honestly suggested a better/effective waytat hasn't been tried already? No. Did they ever present a united front against the inefficiencies and atrocities and plain lackadaisical nature of this regime? They didn't, barring one or two lone voices of protest. Rather, many of them chose to remain indifferent, and even worse, complicit. So, don't you dare presume all faculty members are after students' heads for their actions. Some may have their own agenda, who doesn't? But there are also those who wish things would not have escalated to this, but are still proud of the students for at least standing up for their rights. It's not only law that's taught here, but justice. The motto of the University is Yuktiheena Vicharetu Dharmahnih Prajayate (Judgement devoid of logic destroys Dharma). And like it or not, the past 6 years have been perfect examples of such judgement, strangulating the Dharma out of this institution slowly but surely. Something had to give. So it has. Hopefully, this is not the end, but only the beginning of the students demanding to have their basic rights and at least some of the lofty promises made to them and their families on Orientation Day.
What could the VC have if girls in his campus are feeling unsafe? If there are CCTV cameras the first thing Mr. Bhat should have done is personally investigated into the matter with some senior faculty members. His action should have been prompt and swift. As a neutral reader I feel you are making this issue very trivial because of your bias for Mr. Bhat. It is the duty of the VC to ensure the mental and physical well being of his students. Such issues require promopt and transparent actions. Was that done? If yes please tell me what? Also you speqk of the rights of the accused. But what about the rights of the vicitim? Even if just an allegation what would have happened if they had gone to the cops. In such cases law itself alliws police to detain individuals and treats such complaints very seriously. But you seem to not understand the gravity of the complaint.
I do not know if you are an individual connected with the ground realities of NUJS or not. I am, so I shall attempt to paint as contextually accurate and precise a picture as I can about this.
The students sat at the gate and the teacher you claim to be competent like KR walked right through without a single student stopping him. Yes, students chanted when he did but there was no degree of physical restraint just a moral culpability the students wished to accrue upon the teachers for their complicity in this system.
The result of that was that senior faculty members who till then had explicitly stated that they don't support the strike and would continue to take classes, helped engage with the Vice chancellor.
In the meanwhile, all the couches were bought out, umbrellas were set up and regular refreshments and food was given to the faculty members who were treated with utmost respect except for a few instances of engagement with the student body as a whole, which if you scream at a crowd then it will scream back at you.
With regards to the trip to the Vice Chancellors house, as stated before sufficient notice was provided along with many opportunities for constructive engagement which the Vice Chancellor failed in doing. It wasn't the students who randomly upped and gheraoed his house. It was in fact a measure suggested by teachers who drove the students in their car there and who entered the house first while the students waited outside.
I was not present at the house but from the words of one faculty member and one student who was present there, at no point was there any coercion or misbehaviour.
With regards to defamation, not a single news media outlet or any petition has ever raised grounds of personal events of sexual harassment or corruption. The charge or issue has always been consistent, inefficiency, lack of capability and willingness and active inertia leading to the decline of the university. The Vice Chancellor has never sexually harassed anyone.
He does however directly employ guards who have unfetterred access to the CCTV footage which they use to slut shame girls and make comments about their clothing with implications that they shall be raped because of that.
But no one has ever held him liable for the actions of guards. no, the liability arises from the fact that after this the faculty after inputs drafted a CCTV policy which the vice chancellor did not implement for over 6 months. Guest, the charge is that academic reforms passed by the student body and the faculty have not been implemented by the vice chancellor for four years.
The charge is that after it was proved that a particular contractor had helped the previous registrar embezzle money from the University, the vice Chancellor still employed said contractor for works in the University. The charge is that the ICC of this college rejected an application on flimsy jurisdictional grounds and the appeal has been sitting in the Vice Chancellors office for 8 months now.
The charge is that more than 24 faculty members of repute have left tis university since he has joined and he has not taken active steps to replace them with competent faculty which leaves NUJS with a teacher student ratio of 1:22 which is the worst in the top 5 law schools across India. The charge, my dear guest is that why are the university reports which outline productivity of the research centres in the university plagiarised for the last 3 years? Why are these centres defunct without an ounce of research from 7 out of 8 of them.
With regards to competent teacher, you must recognise that there is a difference between competent and draconion. KR falls into the latter category. Sandy B falls into the former category as does SB or LD and you will never hear a complaint even with regards to KR and with all of the aforementioned faculty with regards to their teaching style or classes. The complaints lie from their membership in the UGC where they have been inconsiderate, bureaucratic and downright inhuman.
Where the convener of the MCS which is one of the most active societies in the college which has done great work for this Universities reputation has to approach KR as the MCS faculty advisor, a member of the UGC and the personal advisor to the appellate authority (VC) for the same application or where the UGC rejects the application of a student for compensatory attendance on grounds that the death of his father is not enough or where 16 students from reserved categories are unable to get their scholarship to continue their education because of administrative neglect, then you will hear complaints.
With regards to incompetent teachers, the students here amongst the best and brightest and they need to be challenged. If they are not then they will mock the teacher. That is a fault on the teacher.
Everything stated here is substantiated by the Review Commission report, the two no confidence motions of the student body and multiple petitions circulated by the SJA. Please feel free to read them.
If you still wish to debate or discuss and are not convinced then I am forever ready.
In anticipation,
V
"Educate, Agitate, Liberate"
Ironically, he lies here as well.
His only flaw was that he came from a humble background and was not sophisticated and suave like most NUJS students. Those students with vested interests and links to maoist organisations hounded him and forced him to resign.
Given PIB was Venkata Rao/Lakshminath camp, Faizan Mustafa/Jaiswal/Gurdip Singh camp might want to get someone in to bolster their numbers. However, Ranbir Singh/KDR will also make moves.
The likes of VK are hard to place (has flirted with both sides [Faizan/Ranbir]); and so are Rose Varghese and Poonam Saxena. The remaining 6/7 (whatever their number is these days!) are in my opinion insignificant in themselves. What camp they belong to remains to be seen.
Another interesting angle is that the HP person is from the 4th DU-->NLU VC. Remains to be seen if they (HP dude, Gurdip, Poonam and Rose) try to set up their own power center.
A 3-way power struggle is a lot better than a 2-way face-off.
- Quote from Pulp Fiction , now to be used against [...] Mafia
Health reason - I am terrible for the health of the institution.
This is as honest as Divine Posterior could get!
1) NALSAR: Veer Singh
2) NLU Ranchi: BC Nirmal
3) NLU Assam: Vijender Kumar
4) NLIU Bhopal: SS Singh
5) CNLU Patna: Bhat (prospective VC)
6) NUJS Calcutta: Bhat
Any guesses who's next?
PS: They got a huge chunk of cash recently.
1. Keep a a watch on the EC Meeting. See that Bhat doesn't try to say anything against the students and poison the meeting.
2. Demand for a public advertisement seeking a VC and selection through a transparent VC. Seniority should not be the defining requirement (e.g. stipulation of 10 years service in professor rank).
3. Reach out to influential and respected well-wishers of NUJS based in Calcutta, who can help --- e.g. Justice Ruma Pal, Senior Advocate Jayanta Mitra.
4. Start backchannel talks with possible future VCs. Some possible future candidates could be:
From India:
a) Manoj Sinha www.nujs.edu/faculty/mksinha-nujs.pdf
b) Sudhir Krishnaswamy azimpremjiuniversity.edu.in/SitePages/sudhir-krishnaswamy.aspx
c) VK Unni www.iimcal.ac.in/users/unniv
From abroad:
a) Shyam Balganesh www.law.upenn.edu/cf/faculty/sbalgane/
b) Deepa Badrinarayana www.chapman.edu/our-faculty/deepa-badrinarayana
c) Dev Gangjee www.law.ox.ac.uk/people/dev-gangjee
d) Surya Deva www6.cityu.edu.hk/slw/people/people_surya.html
e) Shubhankar Dam www.port.ac.uk/school-of-law/staff/professor-shubhankar-dam.html
f) Umakanth Varottil law.nus.edu.sg/about_us/faculty/staff/profileview.asp?UserID=lawuv
You're welcome. :)
Implied
1. NLSIU
2. Nalsar
3. NUJS
True?
You spend a day at NUJS and you see how students harass and heckle everybody who wouldn't let the students walk over themselves. Not just teachers, but mess workers and administrative staff as well. The project extensions, attendance demands, and bullying of 1st years in the name of 'positive interaction' are just some examples. The student body just blissfully indulges themselves in what they do by circle-jerking in a community which is deaf to the world outside its campus.
NUJS is a deplorable place not because of its administration but because of its students.
It is best to involve a few eminent people living in Bengal with goodwilll towards the institution and others with a past/current association with NUJS, rather than outsiders with no connection to NUJS trying to appoint their own people. These would be some good members of the search committee: Madhava Menon, MP Singh, Shamnad Basheer, Kaushik Basu, Justice Ruma Pal, Mr Jayanta Mitra, Mr Anindya Mitra, Mr Gopal Mookerjee etc.
www.patnadaily.com/index.php/news/13417-prof-ishwar-bhat-not-to-be-cnlu-vc-after-all.html
Executive Council of deliberated upon the recommendation of Search Committee and they found out that Prof P Ishwara Bhat was more suitable than other two candidates. PIB joined NUJS on 2nd December 2011
He was mainly recommended by MP Singh and Justice Ganguly.
1. Faults of NUJS go back to previous Vice Chancellors. Prof Bhat is blamed for things he did not do.
2. Review commission gave many wrong findings like NUJS requiring 55 more faculties. No law school in India is having so many faculties.
3. If you see the students they are not making any sensible complaint. Regarding faculties leaving NUJS, truth is that some faculties left for Jindal Law School (where payment is 3 lakhs a month for assistant professor), 1 faculty left for Azim Premji University (which is also private college), 1 faculty left for South Asia University (where payment is on special scale) and some faculties left for NLU Delhi for family reasons. So how this can be fault of Prof Bhat?
4. It is total wrong information that alumnis are not teaching. NUJS has most alumnis teaching. In fact performance of alumnis in teaching has been worst and those from traditional colleges has been best.
5. Kindly note also that NUJS faculties have studied from UK, US, NLSIU etc. I challenge you to show which law school has better faculties.
6. During time of Prof Shamnad Basheer he was very unprofessional to do an open protest against Prof Bhat before media. Also I want to know record of Prof Shamnad ? Better not to say.
7. Regarding infrastructure, if state government does not give funding and fees has to be controlled then how will money come?
8. Students were blocking roads and shouting filthy slogans. Both boys and girls were doing protest wearing clothes like ganji and shorts and playing music as if it is disco or picnic. When many faculties tried to request and give reasons students behaved very rudely and shouted.
9. Under Prof Bhat placement record has been the best.
10. Final point is that the most important observation of the report is that students are indisciplined doing smoking, drinking drug abuse. Why this is not being discussed? Then when one day a serious crime happens you will say why there is no CCTV and stoppage of drinking and drugs?
This is the 200% crystal clear truth.
2. the ratio has gone down to nadir, even if we say there is a vacancy for 30 its still a huge number
3. why couldnt he replace like with like
4. debatable
5. umm... nlud, nalsar, nls.....
6. SB could fire up the imagination of his students
7. this is where management prowess comes
8. moral policing... bad
9. In my time it was CRC who did the job, I guess now VCs do it, singlehandedly ;)
10. What I gather is that CCTVs are working only the ones in classrooms have been switched off. So there should be enough evidence.
It takes a very high degree of shamelessness to cling on to a position after 100% of the clientele you supposedly serve rejects you unanimously; not once, but thrice!
Also - the conduct of certain Professors in this entire affair was deplorable to say the least. KR - the beacon of professionalism shoved a student and entered through the main gate. And was RIGHTFULLY shamed by hundreds of students. SB - the resident moralist, does not lose breath talking about labour protests and bandhs - but has no shame in actively attempting to sabotage the agitation.
On the other hand - LDG, SKG, SS - who are also great teachers sat in the sun for hours, also lent moral support. We are proud of them, and we see their courage to stand up for what's right.
Both the people you mentioned (SB & KR) are excellent teachers and role models. As someone taught by both of them I consider NUJS super lucky to have them. If students speak ill about such professors it says a lot about the declining quality of the current bunch of students (along with vice-chancellors).
Whatever credibility the #NotmyVC movement has is getting lost by posts targeting such people.
Finally, if you have ever been kicked out of a Labour Law class, then chances are either you deserved it, or you deserved it. Please don't blame the teacher for every single bit of your inadequacy. It makes your personal bias against him very obvious and the fact that you are trying to take advantage of a movement to satisfy your grudge.
Also - the conduct of certain Professors in this entire affair was deplorable to say the least. KR - the beacon of professionalism shoved a student and entered through the main gate. And was RIGHTFULLY shamed by hundreds of students. SB - the resident moralist, does not lose breath talking about labour protests and bandhs - but has no shame in actively attempting to sabotage the agitation.
On the other hand - LDG, SKG, SS - who are also great teachers sat in the sun for hours, also lent moral support. We are proud of them, and we see their courage to stand up for what's right.
The previous VC allowed drinking (alcohol) on campus and hence he qualifies to be the best VC of nujs till date, in the eyes of nujs students community. PIB opposed ‘weed’ (alcohol) hence he is the worst VC and must go out.
They wanted to avenge PIB by misleading and fooling CNLU and prevailed over CNLU not to allow PIB join them either. Shame!! Shame!! Shame!! Student community at NUJS Shame!!.
Those who were agitating were LLB stooges of some moron faculties at Nujs, and LLMs (many of whom are LLB (alumnis) from CNLU) did not participate in the agitation at all. Faculties also did not participate except 2/3 butt-hurt professors from NUJS. Those butt-hurt professors who agitated were instead using/fooling the students community to get their vested interest served, in the garb of supporting students’ cause. These butt-hurt professors belong to the same category against whom students also wrote emails 1 or 2yrs back.
CNLU must get in touch with their own alumnis studying LLM at NUJS to understand the inside story, instead of relying on the mislead student community of NUJS.
Going by the Review Commission Report NUJS must stop having ‘Day Zero’ practice, because Review Commission says that NUJS students must indulge in ‘social work’ (and not corporate law firm jobs- impliedly)by applying their knowledge of law. LOL!!
The URC report puts nujs students in extreme bad light when it claims in its report that NUJS students get their jobs not because of their high credentials but because of their socializing networking skills. Shame!! Shame!! Shame!!
The URC report is a report on working of NUJS for past 17 years out of which only 5 years belong to PIB what about the performance of NUJS in the remaining previous 12 years??
Another big problem of nujs is ‘academic inbreeding’. Academic Inbreeding is the root cause of downfall of many educational institutions worldwide. Nujs has the highest no. of alumnis employed at nujs itself, obviously those alumnis currently working at NUJS are not the cream of their batches and are essentially those who managed to lobby with some influential professors in and outside nujs or the weed- doers hiding under the garb of current batches of nujs ‘students’ and are misleading the either student community in every possible way. #doawaywithweed #stopbullying #stopvictimizing # savenujs #sudharjaonujs. Else this shall be the beginning of the end (of NUJS).
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