Vice Chancellor

Prof. (Dr.) V. Nagaraj

Dharmashastra National Law University, Jabalpur (M.P.) was established in the year 2018, by Madhya Pradesh Dharmashastra National Law University Act 24 of 2018, with the object of advancing the cause of legal education and achieving excellence as a University for imparting value-based legal education to undergraduate as well as postgraduate students. The University has also other objectives as set out in the Act.

The Vice-Chancellor intends that this University while promoting the vision as laid down in the Act, would emerge as a unique institution for imparting legal education which is socially relevant and professionally competent. The University has a well-developed curriculum that will help in moulding its students to become not only competent law graduates but in developing an all-around personality to undertake any challenge in life.

The country brought about changes to its economic policy in the year 1990 through liberalization and globalization. The change in economic policy has brought a lot of business including foreign investment in many areas of economic activities. Hence, there are a good number of transactions happening every day in every sector of the economy. This requires a number of lawyers who negotiate the legal aspects of business and ensure how to avoid litigation and do business legally. In case for whatever reason the transacting parties end up in a dispute, the lawyers play an important role in resolving such dispute. The National Litigation Policy has laid emphasis on Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) methods like mediation, conciliation and arbitration to resolve disputes quickly and amicably. The Dharmashastra National Law University, Jabalpur gives adequate emphasis in its curriculum to help the students in learning the skills of ADR methods in addition to the procedural law involved in the use of ADR. The University gives extra emphasis to the learning of advocacy skills by providing a suitable curriculum that will have a number of simulation exercises, which will greatly help the learning of advocacy skills and professional ethics in a well-organised ambience of classes.

The University follows the reservation policy of the State of Madhya Pradesh. Hence, there is a good representation of the socially and economically disadvantaged sections of society. The University gives extra care to these students by conducting tutorial classes for them, so that at the end of five years of studying the B.A.LL.B. (Hons.) course, all the graduating students will be of the same competence. The tutorial classes will be available for every student who is in need of it. The objective is to see that in five years all the graduating students will have a good standard of learning and competence in all aspects of good lawyering.

In addition to the above, the University has a mentoring system to guide the students whenever they are in need of any help.

The Chancellor of the University is the Hon’ble Chief Justice of the High Court of Madhya Pradesh. The University in addition to the advice and wisdom shared by the Hon’ble Chief Justice has the advantage of getting guidance from other judges of the High Court as well. The Administrative Judge who oversees the functioning of the University is Senior Judge from the High Court. The University has an internship programme for the students starting from their 1st year of studies. This is intended to give exposure to the students to understand the law in action. They study what ought to be the law in their classes and see for themselves how the law is functioning in day to day lives of people. This is the point of trigger for research as to how to reduce the gap between ideal and reality. When a lawyer practices in the High Court or the Supreme Court they have to assist the Judges in interpreting the law and developing law to promote a good life for the country’s people as promised in Article 21 of the Constitution, which is a Fundamental Right.

The University gives equal importance to its Post Graduate and Research Programmes. It promotes research in key areas of human life and development of the country, so that the country can honour the constitutional values for promoting better living not only for the present generations but even for the future generations.

To sum up, the students who join this University for any programme will have an exciting learning process which will help in developing an all-round personality.

The Government of Madhya Pradesh has been magnanimous to allot 125 acres of law for developing the infrastructure of the University. This is situated at a distance of about one kilometre from Dumna Airport, Jabalpur. The design of the Dharmashastra National Law University is based on the principles of creating a unique identity for the campus with diversity, providing a good quality of life for the residents of the University. The planning also ensures sustainability. It can be assured without any hesitation that it is going to be a beautiful campus providing many facilities to facilitate the development of the personality of students admitted to Dharmashastra National Law University, Jabalpur.