As the latest national law school (NLU) to make major concessions to its state government, NLU Delhi is introducing a 50% state domicile reservation for the upcoming applications, held via the All India Law Entrance Test (AILET) on 3 May 2020.

According to the notification of the AILET (see above), out of the 110 undergraduate standard merit seats, “50% seats are reserved for students of Delhi”. Another 10 seats for “direct admission... on merit”, split evenly between foreign nationals and Overseas Citizens of India (OCI), are presumably not subject to this reservation.

That 50% horizontal reservation will also apply equally to the incoming up-to 70 one-year LLM students, and will apply horizontally across all other reserved categories (SC/ST/OBC/EWS/Persons with Disabilities).

We have reached out to NLU Delhi for comment and further clarification.

Something in the air...

NLU Delhi is the latest NLU to go for state domicile reservations (though the exact shape NLU Delhi’s will take and who will qualify as a Delhi resident is not yet clear), and considering that most younger law schools have started with state reservations, it may have been the only one left without them (please let us know in the comments if there are any NLUs without state reservations).

Update 14:12: As pointed out in the comments, eligibility for NLU Delhi’s state reservation is as follows, according to the prospectus:

Delhi Region Seats: Candidates passing the qualifying examination from a recognized School/ College/ Institute located within the National Capital Territory (NCT) of Delhi only will be eligible to apply for seats reserved for Delhi Region. In case distance education students, If the centre of examination/ study centre is located in the N.C.T. of Delhi, the candidate shall be considered under the Delhi Region and if the centre of examination/ study centre is located outside N.C.T. of Delhi, he/ she shall be considered under the All India Level seats.

Current statuses of other NLUs that had originally been founded without state domicile reservations:

• NLSIU Bangalore to have 25%, though local lawyers lobby for 50%
• NUJS to have 30%,
• NLU Odisha to have 25% (with a more relaxed local residence requirement),
• Nalsar Hyderabad had planned 50% in 2017, but which currently still stands at 20% [Correction 14:35, thanks for the comment pointing out that it’s not currently 50%],
• Correction 14:03: Thanks the commenter who has correctly pointed out that NLU Jodhpur currently does not have these reservations that had been mooted: NLU Jodhpur proposed 25% in 2018.

Former NUJS student president Arjun Agarwal has argued that domicile quotas would reduce the national character of law schools and

2019 AILET admissions did not have state reservations

According to last year’s AILET admissions announcement (see below), NLU Delhi has previously not had any state reservations.

However, practically, around 15% of NLU Delhi undergraduates have been Delhi-ites: according to National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) figures supplied by NLU Delhi in 2019, only 64 out of a total of its 411 undergraduate students across all batches come from within the Delhi state.

The one-year postgraduate had been more heavily dominated by Delhi-ites, making up 13 out of 23 LLM students (56%).