Home Distance Learning Are NUJS on-line courses illegal? IPleaders, ex-SJA prez Arjun Agarwal argue out each facet of the case

Are NUJS on-line courses illegal? IPleaders, ex-SJA prez Arjun Agarwal argue out each facet of the case

by Lisa A. Yeager

By July of the last 12 months, NUJS Kolkata’s intervening time administration had unilaterally shut down its distance, getting to know certificates courses contractually provided with the aid of all third parties.

This resulted in one scholar coming near the Calcutta high court, which chastised NUJS for its selection main to confusion about the repute of already-enrolled college students. optimum

Are NUJS on-line courses illegal? IPleaders, ex-SJA prez Arjun Agarwal argue out each facet of the case 2

Distance training company leaders, installation with the aid of NUJS Kolkata graduates Abhyudaya Agarwal and Ramanuj Mukherjee, which changed into walking 11 guides for NUJS, become the hardest hit via the ban.

Leaders have reached out to us a while in the past with an in-depth announcement arguing that its online courses were never illegal and that the onus turned into whoever alleges illegality having to offer such proof.

2016-18 NUJS Student Juridical Association (SJA) president Arjun Agarwal, who has, when you consider that graduated from NUJS, has long claimed the other, which was later regularly occurring through NUJS’ instructional and government councils. He had additionally written a letter to the Chief Justice of India (CJI) about this in March.

We have allowed each aspect’s responses and counter-responses to the respective arguments (Arjun Agarwal responding in an utterly private capacity). The feature published the alternate under (due caution, the full documents of their arguments, blanketed under this article, are pretty lengthy).

Disclosures: leaders were an advertiser on Legally India several years in the past.

IP leaders’ arguments are summarised.

In precis, the leaders’ case is that its online publications with NUJS were no longer illegal on the ground of non-recognition. No prison provisions have been presented that such courses are unlawful. UGC had especially regulated all sorts of online courses via new policies in 2018, with the aid of while new admissions to the guides had been already discontinued, it argued.

leaders have furnished the subsequent precis of its role:

UGC started regulating online courses via rules issued in 2018 (applicable from 4th July). By then, admissions in all online guides conducted with the help of leaders had stopped. These guidelines are prospectively relevant and cannot consequently affect the finishing touch of courses of ongoing students or despatch of certificate to students who had already completed the courses with the aid of then.

No students had been admitted as soon as the guidelines were in force.

Until 2018 rules were issued, non-recognition via UGC hints most effective implied that the ranges granted without such recognition aren’t valid for Central Government recruitment functions. It does not imply illegality or a prohibition from launching and undertaking guides thru online mode. This changed into the case with all the other online guides being presented through India, which includes the aid of various institutions of eminence as UGC gave no recognition for any online publications in the absence of a governing regulation.

NUJS, being a statutory college, became empowered with the aid of Section 5 of the WBNUJS Act, 1999, which’s a regulation handed using the West Bengal Government, to run its personal certificates and diploma courses without requiring any additional approvals from IGNOU / UGC unless there was a clear provision to the contrary in every other instrument.
NUJS had also implemented the reputation of its online publications below the IGNOU Distance Education Council’s (DEC) Guidelines in 2014-2015, which had been applicable then. However, no movement become taken on NUJS’ utility by using UGC. UGC has itself admitted that it did now not recognize any new institutions as distance schooling companies between 2013 and 2017.

The outright prohibition by way of unique UGC via its 2016 letters that Arjun Agarwal cites changed into now not relevant to NUJS because it was relevant simplest to universities diagnosed by using UGC for offering distance guides which carried out online guides (the letter become addressed explicitly to those universities), or to universities which had been not recognized using UGC however misled involved applicants to consider that they’re so known by using UGC. NUJS’ online guides were now not recognized via UGC, and NUJS did no longer mislead candidates approximately non-reputation of its online publications, and alternatively especially knowledgeable applicants via website and admission paperwork that there has been no UGC reputation and the results thereof.

This function is agreed upon by UGC and all universities, which include IIMs and IITs, and some of the important universities that provided online courses in large numbers in the remaining ten years. UGC never permitted any of these establishments or publications both. However, they were correctly run, and UGC has by no means objected to the identical. UGC truly did not have any criminal device under which it can regulate or limit any online course within the first place, until July 2018 when such instrument changed into legislated. In the absence of any clean provision of a regulation that avoided NUJS from offering online guides without UGC reputation, unwell informed men and women, inclusive of Arjun Agarwal, are looking to point at disparate instruments seeking to claim that UGC prohibited NUJS from offering online courses without UGC recognition, that is simply unjustifiable.

So far, NUJS EC has given no opportunity to both students of the web courses or leaders to provide its aspect of the case, and the same has been systematically prevented. Leaders are attractive that there must be an independent inquiry set up before which college students of the guides affected and leaders have to be heard.

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