The Leaflet
Comprehensive coverage, analysis, and breaking news on education.
Once hailed as “islands of excellence,” a three-year study by The Leaflet shows that NLUs are marked by poor health infrastructure and weak preventive safeguards — with more to be done for greater inclusion of marginalised communities and mental health support.
Rusham
Staff Writer
Senior Advocate Menaka Guruswamy, appearing for a group of parents, argued that the suspension of physical classes adversely impacted children from economically weaker sections.
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.
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.
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 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.
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”.
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.
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.