NUJS Kolkata has suspended distance learning courses that it was offering through third party service providers.
Course developer iPleaders, which set up the entrepreneurship administration and business laws diploma, the sexual harassment executive programme and 9 other programmes, has claimed NUJS’ move was illegal.
The suspension has allegedly resulted in certificates being held up for students who had already completed courses, examination having been stalled for other students and overall confusion among the students currently pursuing these diploma and certificate courses offered by the law school.
According to a notice dated 27 June signed by assistant registrar Tapash Bhattacharya:
In the 32nd academic council meeting held on 10.05.2018 it was decided that all future activities pertaining to distant education and online courses should be put on status quo, except those which are purely university initiatives.
All enrolments for these online and distance education courses which used to be run by the university through private partnerships have been suspended till further order. Any person enrolling in these courses would be doing it at their own risk and the university shall not be held responsible for such matters.
In May we had reported on that same executive counsel meeting, as having resolved to maintain the status quo while considering further action.
Online course developer iPleaders was the technical provider for the greatest number of distance courses that NUJS was offering at the time of the notice. It provided the technology, content, customer services and marketing for the online certificate courses provided by NUJS for the last 6 years and has catered to more than 4,000 students at NUJS since 2012, according to a statement issued by iPleaders co-founder and NUJS graduate Ramanuj Mukherjee.
Mukherjee said that it was running 11 such courses with NUJS at the time the suspension notice was issued, and that NUJS had over 3,000 existing students enrolled in these courses who would be affected by the move. The course fee for these ranged between Rs 5,000 and Rs 50,000.
In the statement on behalf of iPleaders, Mukherjee alleged that NUJS has not paid iPleaders its dues for several months now since the change in its administration - interim vice chancellor (VC) former justice Amit Talukdar had succeeded former VC Ishwara Bhat in April - and had dishonored the terms of its memorandum of understanding (MoU) with ipleaders forcing it to now invoke the MoU’s arbitration clause as well as to approach the courts for justice.
Mukherjee in his statement urged affected students of the suspended courses to approach the court against NUJS as:
NUJS has certain responsibilities in connection with the courses under our contract, and we will pray to the Courts that NUJS continues to do so for students who are already studying the courses. However, students approaching a court directly with respect to education promised by a University will stand a superior chance than a private party enforcing a contract.
Mukherjee commented to us today: “Prof Bhat had some pending amount (to be paid to iPleaders) but before leaving he cleared most of it. Since the new acting VC has come, he hasn’t signed payment orders even after acting registrar and School of Distance and Mass Education Head Anirban Mazumdar signed them. He also didn’t issue any of the pending certificates by holding up his signature to them.”
He told us that until NUJS’ 27 June notice, there had been no communication from NUJS to iPleaders that it would shut down the courses. He said that in the academic council meeting to which the notice refers, the word used for action on these courses was to maintain “status quo” until a final decision was taken in the next meeting on whether to continue offering the courses.
Thereafter, iPleaders had disabled admissions for the courses.
Talukdar was not reachable for comment by phone and email.
Disclosure: iPleaders has advertised its NUJS course on Legally India in the past.
Some courses offered by NUJS, included the following:
Some offline courses:
- A one-year post graduate diploma in international relations, international law and strategic studies, costing Rs 25,000
- Post Graduate Diploma in Intellectual Property Rights Law (PGDIPRL)
- Post Graduate Diploma in Human Rights
- Post Graduate Diploma in Business Laws Programme (PGDBL)
- Post Graduate Diploma in Air and Space Law
- Post Graduate Diploma Course On Consumer Law
- NUJS - Online Certificate Courses
- M.A in Business Law
- PG Diploma in Public Healthcare and Medical Laws
- Post Graduate Diploma in Business Laws Programme
- Diploma in Entrepreneurship Administration and Business Laws
- Post Graduate Diploma in Nuclear Law
- Certificate Course on Securities Law (An NUJS-NISM Collaboration)
- Certificate Course On Consumer Law
- Rights-Based Campaigning Developing Strategy, Forging Solidarity
Online-only courses
- Executive Certification in Sexual Harassment Prevention & Workplace Diversity
- Executive Certification in Corporate Social Responsibility
- Advanced Certification in Information Technology and Social Media Law
- Advanced Certification in Investment Law and Institutional Finance
- Advanced Certificate course on Companies Act, 2013
- Certificate Course in Criminal Litigation and Trial Advocacy
- Certificate Course in International Taxation and Transfer Pricing
- Certificate in Industrial and Labour Laws
- Certificate Course in Real Estate Laws
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VC office is like club now a days, some (cronies) can come and go extracting information with the help of vc's personal staff.
Never thought nujs will come to this down.
Kian please update us.
So very clearly some matters should get clarified- who proposed the name of this person as VC, and how the EC positively acted on that. How can the EC acted in violation of an Act passed by the Legislature. What are the intentions behind this illegal appointment? And, a retired Judge of HC knowing all these patent violations of the NUJS Act joined NUJS and promoting Machiavellianism.
Even if you say chossing an acting/interim is legal, then justify how this criteria of "Professor of Law" is fulfilled by the act of the EC on 7 April.
Prof. Menon's preface in page xi-xii will clear your doubts. I hope you believe Prof. Menon.
1. Prof Mehdi Ali (BHU, formerly Dean of North Bengal, supervisor of AKP's PhD)
2. Prof JK Das (Calcutta University Law Head, ex-NUJS faculty)
3. Prof NK Chakrabarti (KIIT Dean, former Calcutta University Law Head ).
An announcement will be made shortly.
www.hindustantimes.com/education/teachers-to-lose-jobs-students-their-registrations-if-found-guilty-of-plagiarism/story-mb4ux5npLseZNTIGQYzkGP.html
www.ndtv.com/education/phd-anti-plagiarism-norms-toughened-1872982
Now, he is part of a committee against Bhat. What a double standard of these judges!!!
University has done a right thing in my view by correcting its past mistake but it must ensure giving degree/diploma to those students who were taken in the name of NUJS.
The courses which are offered by NUJS apart from the regular LLB/LLM courses, are extremely general in nature. Take into consideration the PG Diplomas they are offering. Business Laws, International Relations, Human Rights, Medical Laws etc. Most of these and the material for these have very little relation with the industry, are outdated and lack much practical use. Sad, but true. Same actually holds true for the much vaunted Business Law Programme NLSIU offers to outsiders. Almost everybody commenting are probably NLU grads themselves. I am sure when you had been studying yourselves, you would have agreed that most of what the teachers had been discussing in class had little practical application outside. So how can those same teachers prepare material having industry relevance? The classroom teaching offered at these diploma programmes is also very limited, often done by disinterested and unprepared faculty members during weekends and having little value addition. People subscribe to these courses more because of the names of the universities, rather than any value addition by the courses. There too, none of these courses offered by NUJS alone is online and can have very small student base, mostly on local level.
The courses offered by iPleaders, on the other hand, offer material, which do leave room for improvement, but are vastly superior to most of the study material offered by NUJS at the other diploma courses (and also most of their regular courses). They have been specifically created after taking input from industry practitioners and often by practitioners themselves. Most of those pertain to subjects which you will find not even more than a couple of faculty at NUJS would have any idea about, let alone be able to create material about. Moreover, NLUs like NUJS have very little practical idea about how to market courses, which is needed in this day and age, especially with existing courses offered by other institutions like NLSIU already being there in the market. NUJS is singularly incapable of hosting any online course, it can't even get its official website up and running and updated most of the time! Suggestions like that have been made and discarded before.
In the face of this, there are some faculty members at NUJS at present, like AKP, AG, TRC and others, who either lack the ability and competence to come up with appealing course ideas and material and help the university by bringing in revenue, or are too lazy to take such initiatives. At the same time, whenever these people see anybody else doing it successfully with help from others including outsiders, they will do whatever
they can to sabotage it out of sheer spite. Most of the problems currently plaguing NUJS are because of people like this, who will neither contribute to the well-being and development of the university, nor will let others do the same. Case in point, the moment one person from this group had been given the charge of a successful credit course cell few months back, credit courses stopped happening at the university. With people like this inside, the institution actually doesn't need enemies from outside.
#nomoreacting
@nujsgb please put this #nomoreacting in your social media interface to put sja under pressure.
@nujsgb please put this #nomoreacting in your social media interface to put sja under pressure.
Why have you not published my comment on "PIB Out, JUSTICE in"? Publish it....let the people know the inside story of NUJS now.
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