A SET OF TROUBLING DEVELOPMENTS have unfolded in the Faculty of Law, Aligarh Muslim University (‘AMU’). Over eighty final-year law students, out of a batch of just 124, have been denied their IX semester marksheets on the alleged ground of attendance shortage. This has triggered widespread protests, which have since escalated into disciplinary measures, with six students suspended through an Office Memo put out onApril 23, 2026.
The AMU administration has justified the suspensions by alleging unruly conduct, including use of abusive language, damage to property, wrongful confinement of faculty members, and disruption of a B.Tech entrance exam which was scheduled on April 19, 2026. These allegations, serious as they are, must be subjected to a fair and impartial inquiry. However, even if one were to momentarily set aside the contested factual narrative surrounding the protests, the foundational administrative action that triggered the unrest–that is, the detention of students on grounds of attendance, raises far graver concerns.
Protest is an indispensable feature of any vibrant academic institution. However, the present agitation, along with the allegedly illegal administrative decision that precipitated it, followed by suspension, is not an isolated episode. It brings into sharp focus a deeper structural malaise afflicting the institution.
Stand of the Protesting Students
The protesting students have raised certain issues that are legally and institutionally revealing: Does AMU, including its Academic Council, have any rule that permits detention or withholding of marksheets after students have already been allowed to appear for examinations? Students have argued that the applicable framework only contemplates debarring a student from writing examinations in cases of attendance deficiency, not retrospective detention after the fact.
They have also argued that the alleged attendance shortage is, in part, attributable to faculty absenteeism, with classes not being conducted on multiple occasions. In such circumstances, strict enforcement of attendance norms becomes inherently unfair, as students are effectively penalized for institutional lapses beyond their control.
Equally important is their contention that the university failed to ensure any transparent or periodic disclosure of attendance. There was no weekly or monthly publication, nor any timely intimation that could have enabled students to track their attendance and take corrective measures. The eventual declaration of shortage, that too, after the conduct of exams, thus operates as a retrospective penalty imposed without notice, undermining basic principles of fairness and due process.
The sequence of events reinforces these concerns. Students were permitted to complete their ninth semester exams. Their results were declared only on April 18, 2026, coinciding with the final stages of the tenth semester. It was only thereafter that more than eighty students were detained. This raises fundamental questions.
Were students ever informed in advance that they were ineligible to sit for examinations? If not, on what basis are they now being detained? And, under what authority can a university invalidate academic participation after issuing exam hall tickets?
Delhi High Court Judgment and Legal Position
The controversy must be situated within a binding judicial framework that appears to have been overlooked. On November 3, 2025, the Delhi High Court, in Court on Its Own Motion in Re: Suicide Committed by Sushant Rohilla, Law Student of IP University, addressed the consequences of rigid and punitive attendance enforcement in legal education.
The Sushant Rohilla case arose from a tragic incident. A student took his own life after being compelled to repeat a year due to attendance shortage. Recognizing the human cost of such rigid enforcement, the Court adopted a humane and reform-oriented approach and issued a set of unequivocal directions applicable to all law colleges and universities in India.
The Court categorically held that no student shall be detained from taking examinations or prevented from academic progression on the ground of attendance shortage. It further clarified that institutions cannot impose attendance requirements exceeding those prescribed by the Bar Council of India.
The judgment also mandates a structured compliance framework, which includes, weekly disclosure of attendance, monthly communication with guardians, remedial classes, alternative assignments, and practical engagement through legal aid clinics. Attendance is to be calculated strictly on the basis of actual classes conducted. Even where a student falls short, detention is impermissible; at most, a marginal academic penalty may be imposed.
The actions of the Faculty of Law, AMU would fall foul of much of this framework. The retrospective detention of students, particularly after permitting them to take exams, appears prima facie inconsistent with binding judicial directions. The absence of periodic attendance disclosure and remedial mechanisms further indicates non-compliance with the procedural safeguards envisaged by the High Court.
This raises an unavoidable question as to how could such an action emanate from a Faculty of Law? If the faculty was aware of the Sushant Rohilla judgment, the action reflects a conscious disregard of binding law. If it was unaware, it also raises troubling questions about professional competence.
Pedagogical Decline, Research Deficit, and Institutional Complacency
I was a student at the Faculty of Law from 2015 to 2020, and what is clear is that the present crisis is only the latest development upon a long-standing history of systemic problems in the university established in 1891. Attendance-related issues existed even then, though they were not enforced with the present rigidity. More troubling, however, was the state of pedagogy. The quality of teaching was such that many students felt little academic incentive to attend classes.
With very few notable exceptions, teaching standards were deeply unsatisfactory. Lectures were often delivered from outdated notes, disconnected from contemporary legal developments, reflecting both neglect and a resistance to academic renewal. This stagnation is not limited to classroom teaching; it extends to the faculty’s engagement with its own intellectual legacy.
Few would know that Professor N.R. Madhava Menon, the founder director of the National Law School in Bengaluru, who essentially founded the project of establishing National Law Universities in India was an illustrious alumnus of AMU. It wasn’t until his passing, that I would learn of the same. When I sought to search for his memoir, Turning Point (2015), in the departmental and central libraries of AMU, nothing turned up. Had the institution forgotten one of its own, a man who had been crucial to India’s legal education reform? Had AMU forgotten itself?
I finally purchased the book from a store in Delhi.
Broken Promises
The situation is equally concerning in the realm of placements. In AMU, meaningful placement opportunities were virtually non-existent. Faculty members often rationalised that the curriculum was tailored for judicial services aspirants. While citing a handful of successful candidates, they overlooked the fact that these individuals typically cleared examinations years after graduation, leaving the majority without viable pathways.
In terms of research, the picture is no better. Despite several experienced faculty members, there is a conspicuous absence of substantive contributions to contemporary legal discourse. Over the decades, a university conceived to produce an informed and modern Muslim (and modernist reforms in the Muslim Personal Law) has played a significant role in shaping intellectual discourse. The present silence of its Faculty of Law marks a departure from that founding vision.
To the best of our knowledge, in the last many years, there has hardly been any scholarly publication in law in reputed journals authored by existing faculty members.India has witnessed major legal debates on issues such as illegality of instant triple talaq (divorce) and maintenance, gender justice in inheritance rights, adoption/custody of children, and love-jihad and anti-conversion laws over the last decade or so. Of particular significance to AMU was the prolonged and intensely contested issue of its minority status for the university, a question that goes to the very identity and character of the university. Yet, even when this issue was actively being debated in the Supreme Court, academia, and the public sphere, there was little visible intellectual engagement from the faculty.
Such engagement is essential not only for contributing to legal discourse but also for strengthening the intellectual culture of the institution and meaningfully benefiting its students.
The Need for Structural Reform and Accountability
As a centrally funded university, AMU is not subject to the same market pressures as private institutions. Ideally, this should allow it to pursue academic excellence and meaningful research without constraint. Instead, this autonomy appears to have fostered a culture of complacency, where mediocrity persists without consequence. In terms of governance-related chaos or mal-administration, the AMU is already facing probes in a huge fee scam and other financial chaos, flagrant violations of AMU Statutes, certain teacher-administrators including the OSD to the successive VCs since 2012 defaulting on paying fee for their children enrolled in NRI quota (which requires fee in US Dollars) and in the Self-finance Courses, such as the Paramedics. Moreover, the VCs being internal teachers since 2017, are just unable to take tough decisions against the entrenched clouts of teachers.
The present protest, then, is not merely about attendance. Any meaningful resolution must begin with immediate relief to the affected students, including a fair and transparent reconsideration of the detention orders in light of both procedural lapses and the prevailing legal position. Beyond this immediate step, the faculty must undertake systemic reforms. Attendance policies must be applied with clarity, consistency, and prior notice, ensuring that students are not penalized retrospectively. At the same time, if attendance is to be enforced strictly, the institution must ensure regularity in teaching, including mechanisms to address faculty absenteeism and missed classes.
Beyond these concerns, a deeper structural issue must be confronted: the growing dominance of administrative preoccupations over academic responsibilities. In recent years, a number of faculty members have simultaneously occupied key administrative positions such as Proctor, Deputy Proctors, and Member In-Charge (Property), with multiple members from the law faculty alone serving in such roles at the same time. Notably, the office of the Proctor was reportedly held by the same individual for over six years. Appointments to such positions raise legitimate questions about the criteria and processes through which individuals come to occupy positions of administrative authority.
More fundamentally, the faculty must invest in academic renewal. This requires updating pedagogy, strengthening research output, and actively engaging with contemporary legal debates, especially those that bear directly on the institution’s identity and intellectual legacy. Equally important is the need to diversify career pathways by building credible placement support and professional linkages beyond the narrow focus on judicial services.
Unless these reforms are undertaken in earnest, the present episode will not remain an isolated dispute over attendance. It will continue to signal a deeper and more enduring institutional degeneration.