NUJS at a crossroads, will restore intellectual infra, says new VC
Times of India | 3 November 2025
Kolkata: The newly appointed VC of West Bengal National University of Juridical Sciences (WBNUJS), Nandimath Omprakash V, feels the institution is at a "crossroads" and there is a need to create a "new vision" for it and restore the "intellectual infrastructure" of the campus by "breaking the walls and building bridges" among faculty and students.
Nandimath will assume charge on Monday, succeeding Nirmal Kanti Chakrabarti, who served in the role since 2019.
Nandimath told TOI, "The institution is at a crossroads. From here, it can recover and go on to achieve excellence or it can completely diminish itself. It may become one among the many law colleges to produce some lawyers who may not be worth calling lawyers. We need to actually create a new vision for NUJS and make all stakeholders subscribe to this vision and work towards it."
Talking about the new vision, Nandimath shared that it should involve academic excellence and rigour, and high-quality contemporary legal education. "Legal education would include three important ingredients — core domain knowledge, requisite skill, and the ethical value that will go to shape a good lawyer," he said.
The new VC is aware of the continued students' unrest at WBNUJS and their demands, including infrastructure upgrade.
"It appears that the community is somewhat ‘fragmented'. My job as a leader is to first bring a sense of belonging to the institution and break the walls, and build the bridges across people, at least for a few months. Brick-and-mortar infrastructure is the easiest to attend to. What is most difficult is restoring the intellectual infrastructure of the campus. For that, we will require a tremendous amount of motivation among faculty and students," he said.
He shared that when he was among the considered candidates, he wondered why he was going to "a place which is already in crisis". The answer he got was that in spite of the continued simmering discontentment among the faculty and students, WBNUJS is among the top four in NIRF ranking. "This means that the place holds tremendous potential and my job is to unleash that potential to make NUJS one of the leaders in the mission of further refining legal education.
I may be an outsider but Bengal is a space where the first IIT and IIM started. So this is the land which showed some kind of direction to higher education, not just legal education," he said.
He shared his three-decades-long association with National Law School of Indian University which he joined as the junior-most faculty member in 1996 and is now professor of law. He served in every administrative position except VC and was a registrar for a long time.