Law counselling ends on abrupt note

Mou Chakraborty
Kolkata, June 28, 2007
The last day of counselling on Thursday for admission to law colleges in Kolkata was stopped abruptly due to students’ protests following the university move to curtail seats without prior information.
Counselling was taking place at Hazra Law College since Monday and there were 1,280 seats up for grabs for the BA LLB course at the 6 law colleges under Calcutta University. The varsity had called 1,931 students for counselling and on Thursday, applicants realised 140 seats had been reduced at Surendranath Law College.
Angry students blocked Hazra Road from 12.30 pm to 6 pm. Seven students were injured in a lathi-charge when the police dispersed the protesters. “So many students have come to take admission, only to discover that seats have been curtailed. We will not let this happen,” said Abhijit Nashkar, unit secretary of All Indian Students Block (AISB) at Hazra Law College.
There were originally 840 seats in four government law colleges including Hazra Law College, Jogesh Chandra Law College, South Calcutta Law College and Surendranath Law College Two private law colleges, Kingston Law College and Vikas Bharti Law College offer 80 seats each. “I had not taken admission at a general degree college, because I was sure I would get admission in a government law college. Now that will not be possible and I only have the option of getting admitted to a private law college. But then, I cannot pay Rs 35,000 as fees every year,” said Poulami Ghosh, who has ranked 1,088 in the entrance exam.
CU authorities however, claim they had no other option but to reduce the number of seats. An inspection carried out by the university found that Surendranath Law College did not have adequate number of teachers and did not even have a principal. “According to Bar Council rules, colleges need to maintain a 1:40 teacher- student ratio,” said Imtiaz Gulam Ahmed, dean of law, CU.
Ahmed refused to accept that students did not know about the curtailing of seats. “After the seats were curtailed, all the law colleges had put up the information on their notice board. We do not have money to put up advertisements in newspapers every time. If students do not bother to look up the notice board we cannot help,” he said.
Teachers at the counselling session however, alleged that it was neither the university nor the bar council but Surendranath Law College that was at fault. According to them, the college did not take in full-time teachers even after posts were sanctioned. Instead, they preferred to hire contractual teachers.
The SFI said AISB should not have misguided guardians. “The university owes an explanation for the matter but, nothing can be done if seats are curtailed to maintain quality,” said Sudip Sengupta, state president of SFI.
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