Recently, Professor NR Madhava Menon, the founding Vice-Chancellor (VC) of my alma mater, the National University of Juridical Sciences (NUJS), Kolkata, and one of the founders of the National Law College (NLU) venture, passed away.
Few remember that Professor Menon created the present-day rules governing open and distance learning (ODL) in India. Tragically, this legacy is being tarnished at NUJS, which has been continuously violating the ODL regulations of the Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) and the University Grants Commission (UGC) since 2008.
The regulatory framework
ODL in India acquired impetus with the status quo of IGNOU in 1985. For nearly three years after that, IGNOU had the dual position of functioning as an Open University and discharging the countrywide regulator of ODL publications through its Distance Education Council (DEC). Under the ‘Guidelines of DEC on Minimum Requirements for Recognition of ODL Institutions’ (DEC Guidelines), first posted in 2006, universities were required to provide mandatory approvals to provide ODL. Each of the ODL courses was to be run. These DEC Guidelines were compulsorily applicable to all Universities regarding the Supreme Court’s 2009 judgment in Annamalai.
Following the Supreme Court’s judgments in Yashpal and Annamalai, the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) in August 2010 constituted the Professor NR Madhava Menon Committee to propose measures for the sturdy law of ODL. In December 2012, UGC was appointed as the countrywide regulator of ODL (nontechnical guides). IGNOU’s DEC has dissolved to effectuate this, and its regulatory functions have been transferred to UGC’s Distance Education Bureau (DEB). The DEB adopted the DEC Guidelines to avoid disruptions at some point in the transition section. In 2016, the DEB advised that all online ODL courses were being run without its permission, and those guides could not be run till new rules were formulated. Later, the UGC notified the UGC (Open and Distance Learning) Regulations, 2017, and the UGC (Online Courses or Programmes) Regulations, 2018 (Online Regulations).
Recently, DEB’s Right to Information (RTI) response dated 16.04.2019 confirmed that no universities had been granted permission to run any online publications until the Online Regulations came into effect in July 2018.
ODL courses run through NUJS NUJS never had any approvals from the erstwhile IGNOU DEC or the UGC DEB for any ODL publications. Still, it persisted in running offline (lacking approval) and online (blanketly prohibited), given 2008. When NUJS’ apolitical student body, the Student Juridical Association (SJA), produced damning evidence before the 32nd NUJS Academic Council (AC), the individuals resolved to drop all such publications straightaway. This was subsequently ratified through the 61st NUJS Executive Council (EC), which had Justice Arun Mishra because of the then Chancellor’s nominee.
At the 61st EC, the gap training mess has become the commonplace topic for three separate inquiries, and the 62nd EC reiterated the ban following the SJA’s intervention and constituted a fourth, committed inquiry into the gap education mess NUJS is but even to convene. There is likewise evidence to suggest that one of these allegedly worried, Ms. Vaneeta Patnaik, is a founding director of Effulgent Educators LLP, which sought to run a certificate direction in affiliation with NUJS. Interestingly, Ms. Patnaik made no disclosures concerning her affiliation with Effulgent Educators LLP to the University at any factor in time regardless of being a member (both gift and vote casting) of the twenty-ninth AC and the fifty-fifth EC conferences – while the difficulty of her Effulgent Educators LLP became mentioned. This is mainly investigated via one of the inquiries above, in line with the 61st EC.
Subsequent (In)action
Based on the evidence by way of Sixtyth, the sixtieth and 61st ECs affected administrative matters in that they added a vice-chancellor (Acting), Registrar (Acting), and Assistant Registrar (Administration).
The scholars regarded that the Augean stables of NUJS could eventually get wiped clean underneath the watch of a venerable, retired decide of Calcutta High Court, Justice (Retd) Amit Talukdar. However, it is now an open secret that the aforesaid EC-instituted inquiries have passed nowhere. While NUJS tiptoes around the gap schooling imbroglio, it faces numerous civil and arbitration suits inside the Calcutta and Delhi High Courts. Despite orders from the EC, Professor Anirban Mazumdar, Director, School of Distance and Mass Education (SDME), fobbed off duty to correspond with distance education students on spurious “non-public” grounds.
