Ishwara Bhat
NUJS Kolkata’s chancellor, the Chief Justice of India (CJI) TS Thakur, has signed off on a resolution to institute a judicial review commission at the university, according to campus sources with knowledge of the development.
A vast majority of NUJS Kolkata’s student body, on Friday, signed a resolution expressing their “deep dissatisfaction” with NUJS vice chancellor (VC) Ishwara Bhat.
A request by the West Bengal state government saw a last minute addition to today’s agenda of the NUJS Kolkata executive council (EC) meeting that extended the tenure of vice chancellor (VC) Ishwara Bhat by five years. The proposal by the state government would see NUJS having to double its intake of students from 125 to 250 students and to open up two new branches in the state.
At an NUJS Kolkata executive committee meeting today (24 September), the term of vice chancellor (VC) Ishwara Bhat was extended for five years, according to several authoritative sources.
The controversial and possibly unconstitutional NUJS Kolkata draft service rules were drafted by a retired judge for Rs 75,000, after two faculty members – associate professor Anirban Mazumdar and assistant professor Ruchira Goswami – failed to make any significant progress for six months on creating new rules, according to authoritative campus sources.
NUJS Kolkata lifted most provisions of its draft service rules directly from the service rules of nine other Indian institutes, published on the institutes’ websites. The draft service rules limiting constitutional freedoms of its employees and their families, did not bother its faculty members, reported the Indian Express.
NUJS Kolkata’s illegal interior decoration tender, which caused the university major financial losses and resulted in the dismissal of its registrar after an expensive inquiry into the affair, still exists in its original form and has not been cancelled or renegotiated despite outstanding work.
In its draft WBNUJS Service Rules 2016, NUJS Kolkata has been seeking to restrict its faculty and staff from certain kinds of marriage, trade and business, association, engagement with the press and access to courts.
NUJS Kolkata made NLU history when it suspended, for alleged corruption, an officer of the university – the registrar Surajit Mukhopadhyay. A full inquiry report detailing how Mukhopadhyay was involved in alleged illegal award of contracts related to university infrastructure, has been released. The students of the law school led the initiative, the report duly notes.
The Calcutta high court on 26 July dismissed the second appeal of NUJS Kolkata registrar Surajit Mukhopadhyay against his suspension from the post by the vice-chancellor (VC), clearing the way for his dismissal by the university.
NUJS Kolkata has introduced a 10-seat state domicile reservation for admissions, reported Bar & Bench.
Vice chancellor Ishwara Bhat told Bar & Bench that the West Bengal government would provide NUJS with 3000 square metres of land to build a girl’s hostel, after which the academic council made the decision to introduce to quota. “Almost all law schools have some form of reservation and at NUJS, these seats are less than 10 per cent of the total seats avaialble,” Bhat said.
Only NLSIU Bangalore, NLU Jodhpur and NLU Orissa do not have state reservations, reported Bar & Bench.
NUJS Kolkata vice chancellor Ishwara Bhatt announced at the law school's convocation that its guidelines to protect of interns from sexual harassment would be published on its website soon, reported the Telegraph.
The report added that Bhatt promised that if an intern’s employer does not take action against a harasser on receiving a complaint of sexual harassment from the university, the university will “help the intern in a suitable way”.
The report stated that the policy follows sexual harassment allegations by former NUJS students against ex-Supreme Court Justice AK Ganguly, and "another Supreme Court judge", whose name the paper did not specify.
Newspapers reported in January that one of former Justice Swatanter Kumar's NUJS interns, while he was still a sitting judge, alleged that the judge sexually harassed her. Kumar has filed a defamation suit against several newspapers, which will next get heard on 19 May, obtaining a temporary and partial restriction on media reporting the allegations against him without also stating that they are mere allegations.
A Right to Information (RTI) response confirmed that the vice chancellor (VC) Prof Ishwara Bhatt claimed that he rejected interviewing an academic candidate via Skype because candidates would have to give a demonstration class, which has been contradicted by the former VC Prof MP Singh and college sources.
NUJS Kolkata students have been collecting evidence of possible administrative malfunctioning at the university...
NUJS Kolkata alumni have launched an online petition calling on the university’s chancellor to set up a review commission and inquire into, review and remedy falling standards of the law school.
Shamnad Basheer, the ministry of HRD chair professor in intellectual property law at NUJS Kolkata, has resigned after losing trust in vice chancellor (VC) Prof Ishwara Bhat.
NUJS Kolkata will appoint former Chief Justice of India (CJI) Altamas Kabir as an honorary professor by Monday, if no objections are received.
The revelation that former Supreme Court Justice Asok Kumar Ganguly is the judge alleged to be at the heart of the apex court’s sexual harassment inquiry, has split commentators along political and institutional lines.
Since the allegation early this month that a “recently-retired” Supreme Court judge sexually harassed at least one intern (“SJ”), print, online and TV media news have been reporting the story’s twists and turns avidly.