NUJS_Law_Review
West Bengal National University of Juridical Sciences
Law university in Kolkata, West Bengal, India
The West Bengal National University of Juridical Sciences (WBNUJS or NUJS or NLU KOLKATA) is a National Law University (NLU) located in Bidhannagar, Kolkata, West Bengal, India.[3] In 2023, it was ranked 4th among law colleges in India by National Institutional Ranking Framework and 2nd by India Today.[4] It comes under the exclusive chancellorship and purview of the Chief Justice of India.
The university was one of the first law universities to offer a five-year integrated B.A. LLB (Hons.) and an LLM program with five different specializations (Corporate & Commercial Law, International & Comparative Law, Criminal & Security Law, Law & Technology and Intellectual Property Law), later on added a five-year B.Sc. LLB program (with a general B.Sc. degree) as well which was discontinued in 2011 after a change in BCI requirements regarding the same. It then started a B.Sc. LLB (Hons.) course, offering B.Sc. in Forensic science and Criminology, in 2023. Admission to the B.A. LLB or B.Sc. LLB degree program and the LLM. program is through the Common Law Admission Test (a highly competitive, ranked among the top 05 hardest entrance examinations in India), held jointly by the national law schools/universities. NUJS/NLU KOLKATA also offers M.Sc. in Forensic science, MPhil, Ph.D., LL.D, and diplomas in business laws and other programs, in addition to a number of online courses. In 2024, it has also started a specialized 2-Year LLM. program on Data Science & Data Protection Law, in collaboration with IISER Kolkata and IIIT Kalyani as knowledge partners and Cognizant as the industry partner.
NUJS was established in 1999 by the Bar Council of India (BCI), with the government of West Bengal. The Founder-Vice-Chancellor was Professor N.R. Madhava Menon, a former Professor of law at Delhi University, and Founder-Director, National Law School of India University (NLSIU), Bangalore, who is credited with revolutionising the field of legal education in India, by starting the concept of "national law schools", as opposed to the traditional law colleges prevalent before.
The NUJS, along with NLSIU and GNLU, remain the only three national law schools that have the honourable Chief Justice of India as the Chancellor.
Chief Minister Jyoti Basu helped improve the university.[8] Other aspects of the university that was worked on, include Sh. Jyoti Basu, the former Chief Minister of West Bengal who was a Middle Temple barrister;[9] Sh. Somnath Chatterjee, a former Speaker of the Lok Sabha, also a Middle Temple barrister and a leading member of the Calcutta Bar Library; and Justice Chittotosh Mookerjee, a former Chief Justice of the Calcutta High Court and the Bombay High Court and the Acting Governor of Maharashtra. Justice Mookerjee was the university's Honorary Treasurer and has been associated with the university's work since its inception in 1999. The NUJS is an autonomous university.
Initially, classes, which started in 2000, were held at Aranya Bhavan, where the Environment Ministry of the government of West Bengal is located, and the first batches of students started living in government flats. On 28 October 2002, the university's present-day permanent campus was inaugurated by the then Chief Justice of India, B. N. Kirpal.[10] Similarly, the first batch of the B.Sc. LLB (Hons.) program that started in 2023 is being taught in a BSNL office located in Sector I of Bidhannagar, and currently resides in Sector V of Bidhannagar in renovated government apartments of the BSNL Eastern Nodal Training Centre's residential society (along with the M.Sc. and LL.M. students). Once the ongoing vertical extension of the main campus is completed, the batch is to be shifted to the main campus permanently. In 2006, NUJS was allotted a 50-acre (200,000 m2) plot in Rajarhat, an upscale township, which is being developed by the West Bengal government.