President of India inaugurates latest entrant into NLU fold, NLU Tripura

On October 12, 2022, President of India Droupadi Murmu will lay down the foundation of the National Law University (NLU), Tripura. Operations at the 25th NLU in the country are expected to begin in November 2022..NLU Tripura will be established under the leadership of Prof Manik Saha, the Chief Minister of Tripura, who also has been an academic. A strong foundation has been laid through the judicial leadership and patronage under which it is being established. Justice Indrajit Mahanty, the Chief Justice of the High Court of Tripura, is the Founding Chancellor. Justice Mahanty is said to have been instrumental in establishing as well as guiding the setting up of NLU Odisha for several years.Prof Yogesh Pratap Singh is the Founding Vice-Chancellor of NLU Tripura. He was a founding faculty member of NLU Odisha, where he held various key positions including Registrar, Examinations Controller, Chief Warden and Admissions In-charge. He also has a rich experience of being a founding faculty of the KIIT School of Law in Bhubaneswar. Prof Singh has served with the three Chief Justices of India as Deputy Registrar (Research) in the Supreme Court of India..Establishing an institution as a founding member and founding leader is a blessing and a cherished dream. A chance to establish a new university is perhaps one of the dreams of every academic. In the field of law, the National Law Universities occupy a distinguished space. Since the establishment of the National Law School of India University (NLSIU) in Bengaluru in 1986, we have witnessed a sea change in the paradigm of legal education, and one after another, the new national law universities (NLU) were established across the country..The establishment of the NLU Tripura is a right opportunity to revisit the legacy of the twenty-four NLUs which were established by the older generation of stalwarts of legal education. Padma Shri Prof (Dr) Madhava Menon established the NLSIU in the year 1986 as its founding Director. In the year 1997, the National Law Institute University (NLIU) at Bhopal was established by noted Indian jurist VS Rekhi as the Director. The third NLU, NALSAR, was established at Hyderabad in the year 1998 by Prof Ranbir Singh. Thereafter, Prof Menon was blessed with another occasion to craft another exemplary NLU in Kolkata when he established the West Bengal National University of Juridical Sciences (NUJS) in the year 1999. Around the same time, the fifth NLU was established in Jodhpur by Prof NL Mitra, who also served as the second Director of NLSIU. In 2003, Dr Jose P Varghese laid the foundation of Hidayatullah National Law University, Raipur as its first Vice-Chancellor, while Prof VS Mani was the founder Director of the Gujarat National Law University, Gandhinagar. Dr. Ram Manohar Lohiya National Law University in Lucknow was established by Padma Bhushan Dr SS Katiyar, an Indian scientist. Prof Balraj Chauhan started the actual operation of the University as the first Vice-Chancellor. During the same time, the National University of Advanced Legal Studies (NUALS) was set up at Kochi by its first Vice-Chancellor Prof KN Chandrasekharan Pillai, a noted professor of criminal law. In the year 2006, two new NLUs were set up. Prof Gurjeet Singh was the first Vice-Chancellor of Rajiv Gandhi National University of Law, Patiala (Punjab) and Prof A Lakshminath was the founder Vice-Chancellor of Chankaya National Law University Patna. Damodaram National Law University, Visakhapatnam was established by Prof Y Satyanarayana as the founding Vice-Chancellor in the year 2008. The same year, Prof Ranbir Singh had set up National Law University, Delhi as the first Vice-Chancellor. A year later, Prof Faizan Mustafa was appointed as the first Vice-Chancellor of NLU Odisha and Prof Gurjeet Singh laid the foundation of the National Law University and Judicial Academy, Assam as its first Vice-Chancellor..NLUs were being established almost every year in various states by this time. In 2010, the National University of Study and Research in Law, Ranchi was launched by its first Vice-Chancellor Prof AK Koul. Two years later in 2012, Tamil Nadu National Law University, Tiruchirappalli was established by Prof N Murugavel and Dr BR Ambedkar National Law University, Sonipat was launched by Dr Viney Kapoor Mehra. Another two years later, two NLUs were established in the State of Maharashtra. Prof Bhavani Prasad Panda laid down the foundation of Maharashtra National Law University at Mumbai and Prof Vijender Kumar established Maharashtra National Law University at Nagpur as the founding Vice-Chancellor. In the year 2016, Himachal Pradesh National Law University was established by the first Vice-Chancellor Professor Subhash Chander Raina at Shimla. And in the year 2017, a third NLU in Maharashtra was set up in Aurangabad by Professor S Suryaprakash as the first Vice-Chancellor. The twenty third NLU, called Dharamshastra National Law University, Jabalpur, was established by Prof Balraj Chauhan as the founding Vice-Chancellor. The twenty fourth NLU was recently established in the year 2022 at Sikkim by the founding Vice-Chancellor Suryanarayana Sastry Tamma..Prof Madhava Menon, Prof Ranbir Singh, Prof Balraj Chauhan and Professor Gurjeet Singh established two NLUs as the first Vice-Chancellor..These Vice-Chancellors have all been accomplished professors and scholars of law on the one hand, and experienced academic administrators on the other. We hope that the twenty fifth NLU will also stand the test of the time with its strong foundation scheduled to be laid down on October 12 by the President of India along with the founding Vice-Chancellor.Incidentally, this also makes NLU Tripura the third NLU in the North-East of India. We hope the young will lead from the front, while the older generation of NLUs may offer their support for the new born NLU Tripura to strengthen legal education in India..Dr. Nachiketa Mittal is a Professor of Law and the Founder of an online teaching platform, Virtual Law School.