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Law Faculty on strike again, DUSU in full support

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“We are grateful to the authorities for listening to our pleas, but we shall not hesitate to go on strike again, if our demands are not met and discussed with proper attention” – Brajesh Singh, one of the student representatives during the strike in September.

Amit Tanwar and Priyanka Chawri joined forces with the students.
Amit Tanwar and Priyanka Chawri joined forces with the students.

On the 13th of October, Thursday, the students of Law Faculty went on Hunger strike again after the faculty refused to accede to their previous demands.

BACKGROUND

On the 14th of September, the students of Law Faculty sat on a hunger strike after mass failures where almost half the students had failed. Their demands were:

  1. Relaxation in promotion.
  2. Restoration of supplementary exams in the first and second year.
  3. Free revaluation for this semester and for introducing a full fledged revaluation scheme.
  4. Modification of the currently existing Improvement System with Best of Two.

In the end the Dean, Ved Kumari came forward and signed a written agreement stating that the faculty will fulfill their demands as soon as possible.

RECENT DEVELOPMENTS

After almost a month of being promised justice, the students were yet again, forced to sit on strike. Out of the four, the faculty was willing to recognise  only the first demand, that is, the rest were denied. According to one of the students, “Even after assuring us, they have moved back on their word. Relaxation of Promotion was our priority but it was not our only demand, as is being said. When classes do not take place regularly, syllabus is hardly completed and mass failure is happening, revaluation becomes imperative.”

Outside the Dean's Office
Outside the Dean’s Office

Allegedly, the statutory committee which was supposed to draft the proposal to be sent to the UGC, discussed only on the issue of promotion. Afterwards, the faculty denied the rest of their demands stating them to be impossible. On the other hand, the Dean, Ved Kumari stated that when the faculty was willing to give them the rest of their demands, they did not agree. The issue remained locked on both sides. SHO of Delhi Police, Aarti Sharma was also present on the scene.

Amit Tanwar, President of DUSU and Priyanka Chawri, Vice President, sat down with the students in support of their cause. Even an hour long discussion among the Dean, Tanwar, Chawri and the grieved students yielded no results. “The issue of mass failures has been here since a long time and it is time that somebody takes the first step to resolve it.” Mithilesh Jaisal.

According to DUSU President, Amit Tanwar, “ Many of the students here are also working and a year back or bad results can jeopardise  their careers. The students of Law Faculty have the full support of DUSU and we will see to it that this issue is resolved as soon as possible.”

For more information, read our previous report: Mass failures In Law Faculty – Students Protest In Agitation

Image credits: Arindam Goswami for DU Beat.

Arindam Goswami

[email protected]

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Faculty of Law

Mass Failure in Law Faculty – Students Protest in Agitation

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The students of the Law Faculty, Delhi University sat on a hunger strike from 2 pm, 14th of September. The strike was against the mass failures of students that had occurred for the second year in a row. Alleging some problems with the results, they went on an indefinite hunger strike, urging the authorities to look into their grievances.

 

Students at Law Fac protests

HOW IT BEGAN –

Following the declaration of the results, the students began discussions with the teachers and faculty as to how the matter can be addressed and proper steps for re-evaluation of the papers. Almost half of the students had flunked and scored much less than they expected. After coming to a dead end the students decided to sit on an indefinite hunger strike from 2pm on the 14th of September in front of the office of the Dean, Faculty of Law, Campus Law Center building. Brajesh Singh, Mithilesh Jaisal, Nishant and Mohit Gupta were the student representatives leading the strike.

 

Mass Failures at Law Fac

MASS FAILURES –

They alleged that some students were even marked after they had appeared for the exams after a thorough revision of the scores was carried out. The Faculty of Law has three centres –  Law Center I (LC I), Law Center II (LC II) and Campus Law Center (CLC). CLC admits the highest scorers of the entrance exam. According to one report, almost 882 out of 1, 944 students have failed in at least one subject. Students who had scored first division last year have also scored less this time. Around 350 students face year back due to failure in one or more papers.

 

Protests at LAw Fac

WHAT FOLLOWED –

On the fourth day of the strike, Saturday, the Dean, Ved Kumari, being unable to appeal to the students to call off the strike, sat down in protest against them herself. She was recovering from Chikungunya and her health was very weak. Two other teachers, Kamla Shankaran and Kiran Gupta joined the Dean in an attempt to have a dialogue with the students. Since the Dean could not make any promises herself, the students demanded that the Vice Chancellor or his representative come down and negotiate with them. They refused to call off the strike till any such action was taken.

 

DEMANDS –

The students demanded instant redressal of their demands. Their primary demands according to their written intimation were:

  1. Relaxation in promotion
  2. Restoration of supplementary exams in the first year and second year (third years already have it)
  3. Free revaluation for this semester and for introducing a full fledged revaluation scheme.
  4. Modification of the currently existing improvement system with best of two.

These demands were addressed to the Vice Chancellor, Proctor, Dean, Faculty of Law, Dean, Students welfare, University of Delhi in addition to the S.H.O. Maurice Nagar police Station.

 

Effigy burning at LAw Fac protests

DEVELOPMENTS –

After almost 70 hours of strike and  no response from the authorities, the student took the strike a step further and on the 17th of September proceeded to burn the effigy of Professor S.C. Raina, whom they claimed responsible for the mass failures. They marched from the office of the Dean, Faculty of Law till the office of the Vice Chancellor.

Seeing as the students were not willing to give on the strike, an attempt was made to pacify them with verbal assurances and promises. The Joint registrar (Legal Branch) came and verbally assured them that their demands will be looked into and that they should call off the strike. DCP of North, Madhur Verma came as a representative of the Vice Chancellor and tried to call off the strike. When all attempts failed to sway the students, the Dean, Ved Kumari came the next morning signed a written agreement stating that the authorities will complete their demands as soon as possible. The first demand, ‘Relaxation of Promotion’ will be dealt with first and on a priority basis. The rest will have to be passed through the Academic council and the UGC council for approval. Seeing the authorities give in to their demands, the students called off the strike between 9 and 10 am, on Monday, the 19th.

According to Brajesh Singh, “ We are grateful to the authorities for listening to our pleas, but we shall not hesitate to go on strike again, if our demands are not met and discussed with proper attention.”

 

With inputs from The Quint and The Times of India

 

Arindam Goswami

[email protected]

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Campus Central

Hunger strike off but protest on again; Law Fac aspirants claim to have been tricked by authorities

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A tempestuous history The Law Faculty, Delhi University, has faced a lot of flak from the BCI, the authority that controls Legal Education in India, in recent years for the lack of proper infrastructure in its three centres and for flouting several of its guidelines. In 2014, in an unprecedented move, the BCI had derecognised DU’s LLB programme after the University had failed to seek fresh affiliation for its centres. According to news reports, it would have had an impact on all Law Faculty graduates post 2011 because that’s when the institution flouted BCI guidelines by increasing the number of seats without the basic infrastructure for it. Provisional affiliation was granted for the session of 2014-15. The Law Faculty currently does not have an affiliation with the BCI. After the declaration of results of the LLB entrance exam this year in July, the University had issued a circular about the delay in the admissions process and the postponement of the session due to “unavoidable circumstances”, which were that the Faculty was still awaiting BCI’s approval before starting the admissions process for the new session. The BCI recommendations arrived in the early days of August and the Law Faculty wasn’t in the clear despite plans to shift to a new, better-built campus. The BCI report approves intake of just 1440 students as opposed to the Law Faculty’s intake of nearly 2200 students in previous years. This scrapping of almost 800 students understandably did not go down well with law aspirants who were confident of making it to the prestigious institution based on its previous intake numbers. The move has left them reeling because admissions were invited at 2200 seats and the decisions to reduce their number came weeks after the declaration of the entrance results and the original date on which counseling was supposed to start.

In conversation with protesters and aspirants

On August 14, 2016, one day into the hunger strike, we spoke to some of the students who were on a hunger strike to give us their account of the situation. Seated on mattresses with table-top fans in the corridor, several accounts of the effect of the last minute cut-down of seats emerged. Binny Chopra, a law aspirant and one of the thirteen students on the hunger strike, resigned from his job at an accounts firm after the declaration of the results of the entrance exam. He also told us about several friends who didn’t pursue admissions in other law colleges despite clearing their entrances because they were counting on the Law Faculty and had made the cut according to the original number of seats offered. They are left with nowhere to go to with the other universities having closed admissions now. Satendar Awana, president of Delhi University’s students’ union, is a law aspirant himself. When asked about the BCI’s point of the lack of infrastructure to support the number of students at the law faculty, he said, “We were expecting a higher number of seats this time with the building of the new campus which has better facilities which are at par with those of private institutions.” There is a consensus amongst the protesting students about the unfairness of the situation where the original number of seats announced in the prospectus and before the entrance exam was 2200 and this number was cut down without any prior information after months of delay in the admissions. Awana informed us that the authorities, including the Dean of the Faculty of Law, were assuring the students of admissions at the original number of seats days before the notification of the cut-down dropped. The students are disappointed by the lack of resolve shown by the authorities.

Recent Developments

According to our sources, on the eve of Independence Day, the protesters were visited by the Maurice Nagar SHO and the Proctor of Delhi University. They told the students that their demands were being worked on and would be taken care of in the next few days. They also requested them to adjourn their strike, to which the students agreed, hopeful about the concern being shown by the authorities. Awana later received a call from the Dean of the Faculty of Law assuring him that the authorities had written a letter to the BCI, asking them for a stay on this case which would allow them to admit students according to the original number of seats. When the student protestors asked to be shown the letter, it turned out to be something that the authorities had written to the BCI in the past. No fresh communication had taken place from the Dean to the BCI post the recent recommendations by the body. The students, who felt that they had been tricked by this move, are now back to protesting and will continue till the final decision in the case between the BCI and the Law Faculty. When asked about the assurances of the Proctor and the SHO, Abhinav Arora, a Law Faculty aspirant said, “I have no expectations from any of their assurances. I have no expectations of any progress to be made before the final hearing in the court which is scheduled for August 22, 2016. I called the Dean when I was on a hunger strike and he assured me that he’d come and show us the letter that he’d sent to the BCI. After what has happened today, I feel cheated and betrayed.” The final decision in this limbo being played by the BCI and the Law Faculty is being awaited by the students in the hope that they weren’t unfairly denied a chance to study at the institution of their choice because of carelessness of the authorities. In a phone conversation with DU Beat, the Dean of the Faculty of Law, SC Raina, denied claims that the aspirants had been tricked and showed an old letter. He said, “There were two documents. One was a letter dated July 23. The other, which was shown to Awana, was an application that was dated August 16.” When the student protesters were informed about this, they denied being shown the letter written on August 16 and said that it’s possible that it was written by the authorities under pressure after interacting with them. With inputs from Abhinav Arora, The Indian Express, The Times of India and Hindustan Times Image credits: tilakmarg.com Shubham Kaushik [email protected]]]>

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News

DU Faculty of Law organises lecture by Dr. Subramanian Swamy

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Dr. Subramanian Swamy entered the Convention Centre of Delhi University to the chants of ‘Modi, Modi…’ on 29th January during a lecture being organised by Delhi University’s Faculty of Law. The BJP leader arrived almost 4 hours after the scheduled time because of the Supreme Court proceedings over one of his petitions. He was accompanied by Ashwani Kumar Bansal, Dean, Faculty of Law and his wife, Roxna Swamy.

Dr. Swamy was scheduled to speak on the topic- ‘Indian Taxation Laws and Economic Reforms’. He started his address without adhering much to the topic and speaking on general issues like economic growth and the need for a more liberalised economic reforms. Pressing over the point of free market, he said that democracy and market economy are twins. He advocated for globalisation in agriculture and appreciated the Hindu religion and its relevance around the world.

Initially, he took care as to not relate his address to politics. But, he could not help bantering his political opponents like Manmohan Singh, Rahul Gandhi and Kapil Sibal. Gradually, he delved into the politics of market economy in India since his early days in politics, citing an example as to how Indira Gandhi dismissed him once, when he proposed a liberal economic policy in the parliament. He cited various examples of Indians excelling around the world and the Indian products at par with the best in the world. He added it was to encourage the young audience listening to him. He recalled as to how he was not allowed to become a professor at the Delhi School of Economics and was removed from the post at IIT-Delhi because of political conspiracy by his opponents. Later, coming back to the designated topic, he told amid thumping claps that income tax should be abolished. He added that 2G scam and the black money stashed outside the country could more than cover up for the income tax. At some instances, he used the terms- ‘Tommy Gandhi’ and ‘Buddhu’, clarifying that he was not referring to any particular person.

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Ashwani Kumar in his addresses recalled his college days when they used to hear about his stories during the emergency, described by him as the ‘legends’ of Dr. Swamy. In the end as well, there were conspicuous shouts of ‘Modi’. Dr. Swamy left the hall saying, “Modi hi aayenge”.

Other BJP leaders have also visited the Faculty of Law Campus in the recent past. Leader of Opposition, Sushma Swaraj visited the institution last year in August, while Rajnath Singh spoke to students on 28th January, a day before Dr. Swamy’s address.

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[VIDEO] Sushma Swaraj on “Role of Opposition in Democracy” in Campus Law Centre

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Sushma Swaraj, the leader of opposition in the Lok Sabha gave a lecture on the “Role of Opposition in Democracy” on the 2nd of August, 2013 at Campus Law Centre, University of Delhi. She was greeted by a long applause and series of whistles by the gathering after which she began talking about the functioning of a democratic government and how the ruling party and the opposition party together strive to create a better society.

Swaraj also talked about how it is the responsibility of the opposition to create sufficient checks and balances in the system and keep the ruling party on its feet. She moved on to highlight the government’s mistakes in tackling cases of high sensitivity such as the Bhopal Gas Tragedy, tackling corruption, etc. In light of the apparent divide in BJP as far as the position of Modi is concerned, Swaraj’s lecture comes across as a political tool to paint a very content and united picture of the insides of the party politics.

The audience, despite the big name did not comprise of a large number of people. Sushma Swaraj ended by saying that all that BJP has done till now and will continue doing, is only and only in pursuit of greater good and nothing in pursuit of self interest.

Here is the video of the entire speech:

Image credit: Vatsal

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Campus Central

Students of Law Fac Organise Protest March Against University Authorities

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The students of the Faculty of Law, as well as the students who are trying to take admission in the Faculty of Law, organized a huge protest march starting from the main gate of the Arts Faculty and it culminated inside the Faculty of Law. The main reason for organising this protest march was to make the University authorities aware of the malpractices that are going on with total support from the admission committee and with full guidance and support from the Dean, Faculty of Law.

There have been several cases of mental harassment as well as vulgar abuses against the existing students who have been detained due to personal biases and also against girl students who are trying to seek admission in the Faculty of Law. Several cases of students seeking admission in the Law Faculty being booed with filthy abuses have been reported. There have been several complaints regarding this from the students to DUSU. Students seeking fresh admission to the Faculty, as well as those currently enrolled, came out and joined hands, expressing their solidarity against the Dean in what has been described by some students as a “tyrannical” rule.

Current students of the Faculty have been facing constant harassment at the hands of the Dean as they have been detained on account of shortage of attendance, the stipulated requirement of which is 66%. These students spread out overall three years of the LL.B. course found themselves in these unfortunate circumstances only 4 days before the start of their end-semester examinations. When they approached the Dean and other members of the Faculty, they were humiliated, verbally abused and made to run from pillar to post. They allege that they have been detained without warning and have fallen victim to the rivalry between the Faculty and the administration. As if the testimonies of the current students did not disincentivise an admission seeker from applying to the Faculty of Law, students have been made to wait for hours on end to be able to procure and submit their LL.B. Entrance Forms in the sweltering heat. The counter to submit the forms opens an hour late and the lunch hours are flexible to the whims and fancies of the staff. Upon making a complaint, students were abused verbally and the staff did not even heed to the presence of female students and continued to use filthy language which is not expected from a faculty of their caliber.

Students, fed up with the situation, approached the DUSU Office and through its President, Shri Arun Hooda, a complaint was made. Instead of readdressing the grievances of the students, the faculty, hand in glove with the college administration, falsely framed the student leader of misconduct. The Dean’s attitude and approach has made many a student regretful of their association with the Faculty and fresh admission seekers are thinking twice before applying for admission on account of the harassment meted out to them. The protest was carried out in the Faculty premises and the students marched near Gate No.4 and a memorandum of their grievances was submitted to the University authorities. Appeal has been made by these angered student community for stringent action against the Dean and an enquiry into the issue at hand.

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