Legally India has today filed right to information (RTI) requests with India’s seven oldest national law schools, seeking full financial accounts, council meeting minutes and other information.
Today RTIs were submitted via email to the public information officers (PIOs) at NLSIU Bangalore, Nalsar Hyderabad, NUJS Kolkata, NLIU Bhopal, NLU Jodhpur, GNLU Gandhinagar and HNLU Raipur, which were founded between 1987 and 2003 and were the seven most popular colleges in the preferences of Common Law Admissions Test (CLAT) takers in 2011.
Couriered hardcopies of the application with enclosed payment of Rs 150 each will be dispatched tomorrow.
Each RTI requests details on and copies of “any investigations, inquiries or reports conducted or prepared at the college in the last 10 years under the university’s governing statute, or at the behest of the university’s chancellor, any judge, or any statutorily appointed body”.
For the past five years, the RTIs also request:
- full sets of financial accounts of the colleges,
- copies of correspondence between the college and the chancellor,
- a list of contracts of the college with outside contractors,
- funds allocated to each student committee,
- pay scales of teaching staff and minutes of meetings relating to it, and
- dossiers of faculty and staff of the university.
Legally India specifically asked for a copy of the NLSIU report of May 2009 created by the School Review Commission headed by Justice KT Thomas, and reported by the Times of India in January 2011 as evidencing decreasing standards and an increase in drug use amongst students.
No enquiries for judicial reports were made of Nalsar, which last week provided a full copy of its first judicial inquiry.
The youngest colleges proved to have been the most transparent and RTI-application-friendly so far.
GNLU and HNLU have both published comprehensive information in their RTI compendia, including the latest income and expenditure statements, a detailed list of faculty and more [download GNLU compendium / HNLU RTI compendium]. HNLU went even further and provided additional details on expenses, allocation of funds to committees and more.
NLU Jodhpur’s publicly available RTI information was the weakest, with the RTI contact details buried in the “Administration” section of its website while not providing any email address.
The four other law schools all made it reasonably easy to find RTI sections via their websites, although they did not publish reports as detailed as GNLU and HNLU.
Legally India will regularly publish updates on responses received, or not, and hopes to make all information supplied publicly available.
If this pilot project is successful, Legally India will make similar applications to younger national law schools and other non-national government colleges.
Please provide ideas for more detailed RTI requests below in the comments.
Photo by Harald Hoyer
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nludelhi.ac.in/RTIAct.htm
Also, the PIO after going through the application will ask you to pay the required amount (number of pages X 2 rupees). Rupees 150 sent the way you have might result in your application getting rejected.
All the best, though.
moreover PIO would let u know the amount after collecting the knowledge so hardly matters :O
then u can hve the info in CD so cost saving ;)
where there is will there is way :)
i had asked the details but sent me a bill of 1.75 lacs so now i have told them to send me in CD hav'nt got any response but i RTI have exploded the bomb in one of the Top5 NLu ( Giving sleeples night to few :O ) INSIDER :O
Quoting email:
nludelhi.ac.in/RTIAct.htm
including the list of employess, their pays, the annual budget and expenditure, the proposed budget.
Check before saying something
regardless of its back door entries, nalsar is also doing just fine. still, it's obvious they have had back door entries in the past.
go back to pretending you're an intelligent human being.
NLU Delhi is Jail (4-6 pm, Really?) where prisoners are kept in a state that they become frustrated (I have many friends there, and they tell about this state). And yeah, how can we forget the presence of a Dictator (A good administrator too).
Best
Kian
a. Why have you sent them with Rs. 150. They should have a postal order/dd for Rs. 10. The photocopying charge will be specific and be asked for later by the PIO.
b. You have to send them RTIs to Symbi Pune. I have to say this will probably be more interesting than many of the others, not only because here too you will find major irregularities, but because it is a deemed university and the students are afraid to say anything in case they suddenly find they are held back a year. As a result there is no check from the student body at all. The administration of the university and the college has acted with complete impunity.
Around if you need more details!
In this case we thought one way of doing this is to affix an amount sufficient enough to cover reasonably anticipated costs of, say, CD enclosing soft copy of the documents. In Nalsar's RTI for the 3 judge report, the CD cost amounted to 60/- and we were otherwise informally informed that 100/- is sufficient in most RTI cases.
Wondering of a better way still ..
Thank you for your comments and feedback.
The responses here have been extremely helpful and we intend to make meaningful use of them in following up on our applications.
We shall keep everyone posted on the status of the applications and the replies supplied by the law schools.
The concerns about younger law schools escaping the scanner, intermittently as it may be, are significant. We are keenly counting on the prompt success of this pilot project concerning law schools established before 2003, to use the process on younger law schools.
Best wishes,
Prachi
Heartiest Congratulations to you and to LI for the effort you are making to unearth the truth of the National Law Schools of our Country including NUJS Calcutta. It is because of the effort of LI and yourself and your team that we now come to know about NALSAR and people of Inida will soon come to know about NUJS. It is a fact behind all illegalities there is an interest and that may be financial interest or a relationship interest.
It was a great expectation that people entrusted with the responsibility for legal functioning of NUJS will work accordingly but they have placed their own interest above the interest of the law school and students and their parents. Please do remember that publishing the facts is not only the end but real hard work is to make the system to work to establish legal atmosphere in a National Law School. Hope you will be able to fulfill suchexpectations.
I hope your effort seeking documents from [...] under RTI will also unearth the illegal acts of [...] during the tenure of [...] as Vice Chancellor. You and the whole country will be shocked to know how one after another - series of illegalities happened in [...]. It will be shocking to know how self interest has been placed above the interest of the students and the Law School. Surprisingly the authority of [...] GC, EC and AC are keeping silent. What about the [...] ? It has been also shocking to know how the students and the Faculty members of [...] have been cheated.
Hope all the truth will be exposed and students of [...] and other National Law Schools and the Judiciary system of our Country will be come to know the truth.
Wishing you and LI all the best in the effort that has been undertaken to make the Legal education work properly and illegal actions to be initiated by the competent authority against illegal functioning.
Quoting Prachishrivastava:
While investigating, it would be (kind of obvious) good to keep in mind that anyone skimming money from tenders (related to construction, events, procurement etc) would have covered up to a certain extent and thought of how to justify their scam. Manner of award of tenders, and also selection/promotion of staff should also be examined.
also, when do you plan to bring NLUD within the net? Even as this NALSAR hoopla rages, the favouritism, corruption and all things immoral, continue unabated! WE NEED INTERVENTION!
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