ILS wanted to collect ₹1.12 crore for moot court against actual spend of ₹1.98 lakh: SPPU to Bombay HC

Savitribai Phule Pune University (SPPU) has told Bombay High Court that Indian Law Society's (ILS) Law College proposed charging ₹7,000 per student as Moot Court Fee.

The College's actual spend on the activity was ₹1.98 lakh. With its intake of 1,600 students, the proposed fee would have amounted to over ₹1.12 crore.

The submission was made by SPPU and its Fee Fixation Committee (FFC) in reply to ILS and its Law College's challenge to SPPU's decision to fix the college's "other fees" at ₹4,340 for the academic year 2026-27, down from the approximately ₹37,000 the college had been charging.

The matter is being heard by a Bench of Justices RI Chagla and Farhan Dubash. The Bench on Thursday declined the college's interim plea for provisionally charging pre-reduction fees and has listed the challenge for hearing on June 29.

As per annexures in the affidavit, the moot court figure was not the only discrepancy the FFC flagged. On Seminar and Conference fees, the college's actual expenditure was ₹14.52 lakh. The proposed fee was ₹3,000 per student, scaling to ₹48 lakh at 1,600 students. On Training and Placement, the actual spend was ₹5.32 lakh against a proposed ₹4,000 per student, totalling ₹64 lakh. On Abhivyakti Law Journal, actual expenditure was ₹3.40 lakh against a proposed ₹990 per student, amounting to ₹15.84 lakh. The FFC called these only a few instances and noted there were many more inconsistencies of this kind.

The committee also challenged ILS's calculation methodology. It said that government salary grants should have been deducted before computing per-student costs. It called the 20% depreciation on assets excessive and questioned an incentive of ₹4,799 per student that did not appear in the audited accounts.

After considering ILS' written explanation, the FFC in its meeting on April 6, 2026 fixed the other fees at ₹4,340. 13 of the 18 heads proposed by ILS were either zeroed out or reduced to a fraction of what was sought. SPPU communicated this decision to ILS on April 30, 2026. ILS rejected it by a letter dated May 13, 2026 and demanded the University withdraw it.

SPPU has also alleged that ILS has not approached the Court with clean hands and has suppressed material facts. The University says ILS' petition makes no mention of the fact that the College itself had submitted a written explanation to the FFC in response to the discrepancies flagged in June 2024.

According to the affidavit, SPPU emailed ILS on June 29, 2024 seeking a written explanation for the discrepancies in its balance sheet. ILS's then Acting Principal, Dr Deepa Paturkar, replied the same day that she was travelling and would respond after July 11, 2024. The explanation, dated May 27, 2025, was received by SPPU on June 2, 2025, approximately 11 months after it was sought.

The explanation contested several of the FFC's findings. On the moot court figure, ILS argued that the ₹1.98 lakh the FFC cited reflects only what was spent on direct aid to students competing in moot courts outside the college and that the total moot court spend in 2022-23 was ₹10.07 lakh when all related activities are included. However, even accepting ILS's own figure, the College was proposing to collect over ₹1.12 crore - more than 11 times what it says it actually spent - from students under that head.

The FFC's letter to ILS also noted that the College's income and expenditure account for 2022-23 showed a net deficit of ₹4.68 crore but only after providing rent of ₹8.50 crore to the Indian Law Society. The committee observed that if the rent were brought to what it considered an allowable level of ₹80 lakh, the college would show a surplus of ₹3.02 crore on gross fee collection of ₹7.38 crore amounting to 41 percent, "at the cost of the students."

ILS said that the rent is based on a government valuation of the campus at ₹484 crore and that ₹8.50 crore is well below a reasonable return on that value. It also points out that the Indian Law Society had given ₹29.54 crore in advances to the College as of March 2023, presenting this as evidence that the Society is financially supporting the institution.

However, what that framing leaves unaddressed is that the College might be one of the Society's major sources of income, meaning the advances flowing back to the College might be drawn substantially from fees collected from students.

Before the High Court, SPPU has submitted that under Section 101(7) of the Maharashtra Public Universities Act 2016, the FFC's decision on other fees is final and binding on the College and that ILS's refusal to implement it constitutes a breach of its affiliation conditions. The University has sought dismissal of the writ petition with costs.