As the National Law School of India University (NLSIU) implements a 25% reservation quota for “Karnataka students” in the BA LLB and LLM courses, it faces the daunting challenge of where and how to accommodate the new influx of students.
A notification on the university website announced about the reservation on Tuesday. The notification acknowledges the National Law School of India (Amendment) Act, 2020 which came into effect on April 27, and introduces a new category of institutional preference for candidates “who have studied for not less than 10 years in a recognised educational institute in Karnataka.”
The announcement has triggered concern within the existing student body, which expressed worry that university standards would decline.
To accommodate the new reservation students, NLSIU said it has increased the number of seats in the BA LLB programme from 80 to 120. Dr Sarasu E Thomas, Registrar, NLSIU, added that the number of seats could potentially increase further.
“We didn’t want to increase the number of seats all at once, because it would impact the quality of education. We will have to take a call on it in subsequent years,” she said.
Although students lauded the administration for increasing the number of seats to compensate for the new reservations, some expressed concern about whether the university has the infrastructure to sustain the new numbers.
Out of the 120 seats in the BA LLB programme, 93 will be for general category students within which the Karnataka reservation students will be placed. An additional nine reserved for ST students and 18 reserved for SC students.
In the LLM course, Business Law will have 30 seats in total (23 for general category students) and 20 seats in Human Rights Law (15 for general category students).
Students expressed concern the new students would alter the student-to-teacher ratio. “Part of the reason why the university has such a high quality of education is because of the low student-teacher ratio. If you take that away, I’m not sure what we will be left with,” said one senior student.
Sources also said the boy’s hostel has run out of space, prompting the university to consider PG housing in Nagarabhavi.
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