Education

“Grossest abuse”: Supreme Court imposes Rs 1 lakh cost on petitioner seeking reopening of Pramati Education Trust, which granted exemption to minority educational institutions from RTE Act

The petition had been filed barely three months after another Bench of the Supreme Court expressed doubts about the correctness of the 2014 Constitution Bench ruling.

One Year of the AMU Judgment: A six-decade old question and an incomplete answer

The 7-judge bench decision did not truly resolve the legal dispute, instead pirouetting around its core, shadowboxing with half-arguments while leaving the heart of the matter suspended in mid-air for a 3-Judge Bench to factually determine.

Delhi HC’s Sushant Rohilla decision invites a rethinking of legal education’s aim

In its recent judgement, the High Court ruled that no student enrolled in any recognized law college, university or institution in India shall be detained from taking examinations on grounds of lack of attendance.

In Nagpur’s national law university, a sexual harassment survivor refuses to forget

In MNLU Nagpur, a survivor received no justice despite two consecutive findings that she was sexually harassed on her college grounds. Across India’s NLUs, patterns of anti-sexual harassment law non-compliance and retraumatisation of survivors repeat over and over.

At NUJS Kolkata, student exasperation with Vice Chancellor accused of sexual harassment reaches a crescendo

Financial impropriety, administrative breakdown and a Supreme Court order noting that a sexual harassment case “must haunt the [Vice-Chancellor] forever” - students at the national law university say that their assertion is against “persistent apathy”.

How the Social Justice Ministry’s retrospective rules jeopardise PhD fellowships of Scheduled Caste students

A November 2024 office memorandum of the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment makes NFSC eligibility conditional upon NAAC accreditation of the student’s previous university. The SC formed National Task Force must recognise this as a glaring violation of the Court’s own precedents.

The National Fellowship for Scheduled Castes has been warped in ‘bureaucratic casteism’. The Supreme Court-formed-NTF must take note.

Once imagined as a corrective measure to support Bahujan PhD candidates, the NFSC has sadly reproduced the endless waiting and humiliation which has historically characterised the bureaucracy’s repressive treatment of marginalised communities.

SC issues notice to Union and States on plea seeking Transgender-Inclusive Sexuality Education in school textbooks

The plea alleges that there has been noncompliance with the Supreme Court’s earlier judgments in NALSA (2014) and Society for Enlightenment and Voluntary Action (2024).

SC asks Jamiat Ulema-i-Hind to challenge NCPCR’s directive to shift students in unrecognised madrasas to government schools, in High Courts

Declining to hear the matter on merits, the Court extended the October 2024 interim stay on the NCPCR’s communications.

Reframing India’s student suicide crisis as a ‘constitutional injury’

As tragic stories from Odisha to IIT Delhi fill our newspapers, the Supreme Court formed National Task Force on mental health and discrimination must treat these deaths not merely as administrative lapses, but as constitutional infractions.

Chief Justice Gavai just spoke the truth. Legal education was never equal.

CJI Gavai’s speech last week urging students to reconsider the value of self-funded foreign law masters degrees was more than just financial advice. For those living through the reality of his words, it was a testament to the structural inequities of India’s legal education spaces.

Jamia, Aligarh and the complex legacies of India’s Muslim institutions: Laurence Gautier’s new book tackles it all

In post-Partition India, AMU and Jamia Millia Islamia rose as political and symbolic characters, submerging deep into the socio-political lives of India’s 200 million Muslims.

In the three-year mandatory practice debate, clinical legal education offers a third way

On June 16, a review petition against the SC’s three-year practice judgement raised the concern of marginalised communities’ access to the judiciary. But the SC’s reasoning that there is no effective justice without practical exposure holds weight too, and a new model of legal education may show light.

The idea of a university: A response to Sanjeev Bikhchandani

Can a university not be a space to debate and critique the hounding political issues of our time - including how court decisions and the law are framed - what Upendra Baxi terms ‘demosprudence’? How would social movements inform judicial decisions unless they are discussed beyond the four walls of the superior courts and the black letter of the law?

To deliver justice well, we need judges who have lived it too: In defence of the SC’s 3 year practice mandate for judicial exams

Judges with prior litigation and trial experience are often better at managing case dockets, adjournments and empathising with the granular struggles of underprivileged litigants. But the decision’s exclusionary impact on women and marginalised communities highlights that systemic reform is a project far from complete.

Deferred dreams: Bureaucratic lethargy in CLAT and judicial service exams unravels the dim future of the legal profession in India

In April, a Supreme Court bench chastised the CLAT consortium for the “casual manner” in which it framed questions in CLAT 2025, putting at risk lakhs of careers. Meanwhile across Indian states, judicial service exams have remained on hold. Stuck between lethargy and institutional incompetence, the emergence of a generation of unemployed law graduates shows mirror to the crisis confronting the legal profession.

A ‘refuge’ from learning: India’s longstanding dilemma on Rohingya education

The ‘illegal migrant’ categorisation of Rohingyas has ensured a blanket denial of most fundamental rights. However, earlier this year, the Supreme Court stepped in to acknowledge that Rohingya refugees could not be discriminated against on access to education. But the rot runs deep, and the legislature, at some point, must take note.

In AMU’s forgotten Kerala campus, students wage a lonely war against maladministration and embezzlement

In Aligarh Muslim University’s Malappuram campus, students uncovered financial irregularities running into lakhs forcing the provost to resign earlier this month. It has been a battle for the Sachar Committee’s promise of educational excellence for India’s marginalised communities.

Playing with immunity: Mired in illegalities, South Asian University harassed students and international staff as Hindu right-wing forces enjoyed free pass

The assault on a woman student in South Asia's only international varsity over serving of non-vegetarian food on campus, and its uncanny fallout, reveals a systematic flouting of norms and procedures

Infosys’s termination of 600 young professionals betrays the promise of NATS, NAPS apprentice schemes

The Karnataka Labour Department’s February 2025 inquiry report concluding that Infosys acted within the Apprenticeship Act and National Apprenticeship training scheme is flawed. The company’s predatory practice is disjointed from the vision with which schemes like NAPS and NATS were brought in.

A fair ordeal: Discrimination, State accountability and the menace of ragging in Indian educational institutions

Despite the Supreme Court’s strong guidelines in 2009 to monitor and curb ragging, a recent report reveals that ragging related offences surged in India between 2012 and 2023. To effectuate the Constitution’s transformative vision on India’s educational spaces, we need a deeper relook at how gender, class and caste inform everyday oppression on our campuses.

KIIT student death: Need to reform UGC and BCI guidelines to strengthen institutional accountability

Indian higher education institutions have perfected the covering up of harassments, sexual assaults and suicides, often sidelining and delaying lawful, responsible measures to secure safety of students. The KIIT case must be a clarion call for critical reforms.

Chokehold: Law and disorder stifling dissent in Jamia Millia Islamia

As a recent wave of protests erupt in one of India’s leading minority institutions, the administration has responded with heavy police deployment and invoking the law to curb demonstrations. Faced with archaic property defacement laws and charges of ‘unlawful assembly’ and ‘mischief’ under the new criminal codes, students continue a push-back for free speech

Explained: The Supreme Court judgment on the UP Madarsa Act

Why has a three-judge Bench of the Supreme Court overturned the Allahabad High Court's judgment on the validity of the Uttar Pradesh Board of Madarsa Education Act, 2004?

Delhi University as a microcosm of a police state

The recent history of Delhi University is symptomatic of the weakening of democracy in India but in the activism of students, there is hope for the future. 

Sabarmati Ashram: Betrayed by its sentries

In Ahmedabad, Sabarmati Ashram is popularly called Gandhi Ashram, in future it will be known as Modi Ashram. That is the objective of the megalomaniac, writes Tushar Gandhi.

Is the ground more fertile or does it produce a better yield because of its caste?

Change requires action, which requires sacrifice, which requires courage, which requires freedom. Caste is the antithesis of freedom. So, how to force change on a society so deeply entrenched in unfreedom, asks Akshat Jain.

Society’s declining capacity to heal itself underlies tragedies

The legal and policy regime finds itself overwhelmed by an increasingly corrupt system and decrepit society, writes Prof. Arun Kumar.

Rajinder Nagar tragedy is symptomatic of a drowning system

The private coaching sector business in India is geared to produce entitled civil servants and professionals, broken also-rans and disgruntled outsiders who cannot afford their services, writes Shubham Sharma. 

Why is the Rajasthan government using internet shutdowns to curb malpractices in public examinations?

Paper leaks in Rajasthan, a state with a high unemployment rate, are just the visible manifestation of much deeper systemic problems, including long and frequent internet shutdowns and infrastructural issues.

What is the new Union law to prevent ‘unfair means’ in public examinations?

Kota story redux: UMMEED will be hopeless without wider social changes

In October 2023, the Union ministry of education unveiled the draft guidelines Understand, Motivate, Manage, Empathise, Empower, Develop (UMMEED). Are they enough to stop the suicide epidemic among students in India? 

Who is afraid of Dr B.R. Ambedkar?

As recent incidents in Tamil Nadu, a state where the Ambedkarite movement is strong and the government sympathetic, reveal, everyone wants a piece of Dr B.R. Ambedkar, but when it comes to promoting his ideas and thoughts, things get complicated.

Why has the Supreme Court stayed the Allahabad HC judgment striking down the Madarsa Act?

A detailed analysis of why the Supreme Court has stayed the Allahabad High Court judgment striking down the Uttar Pradesh Board of Madarsa Education Act, 2004.

Why has the Allahabad HC struck down the Madarsa Act? Explained

Read this detailed explainer on the judgment of the Allahabad High Court striking down the Uttar Pradesh Board of Madarsa Education Act, 2004.

Parliamentary committee calls for redefining role of BCI in legal education in India

AMU minority status case: An opportunity to repair the illusion of a secular republic

AMU minority status case: A comprehensive summary of the eight days of hearings

Women-led initiatives revive education in Rohingya refugee camps, yet challenges persist