Chief minister Nitish Kumar listens to people’s grievances at his janata darbar on Monday. Picture by Deepak Kumar

Patna, April 11: A group of students of Chanakya National Law University (CNLU) today visited the janata darbar of chief minister Nitish Kumar and lodged a complaint against the institute for not providing placement opportunities.

They claimed that no company had come to the varsity campus to offer them jobs since it was established in 2006.

Ravi Anand, a final-year student of CNLU, said: “A. Laxminath, the vice-chancellor of the university, has been making false promises to us. Not a single company visited the campus for placement. Students are being charged hefty fees but the placement rate is zero.”

“When admitted, the varsity authorities claimed that multinational companies would visit the campus for placement but nothing like that happened. Now we are helpless. We do not know what to do after completing our course,” said Anand.

He added: “When we asked why there were no placements in our university, the vice-chancellor gave us an evasive response. He said the reputation of Bihar is bad and that is the reason why big companies do not want to come here. He also said that the university is not responsible for giving placement to the students.”

“You tell us what we should do. Where will we go? We were depending on campus placements,” Anand told Nitish.

The chief minister promised to look into the matter. “I will see how we can solve the problem. I will personally speak to the vice-chancellor regarding this,” Nitish said.

Chanakya National Law University students at the janata darbar on Monday. Picture by Deepak Kumar

After that he asked the students to meet Chanchal Kumar, the secretary to the chief minister. One of the students went to Chanchal to lodge his complaint against the vice-chancellor but he did not want his name to be revealed.

“When people like Bill Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft, and chief ministers of other states are praising Bihar, it becomes difficult to digest that multinational companies do not want to come here because of the state’s bad reputation,” said Laxmikant Sumit, another student.

“There is a dearth of teachers and facilities at the varsity. One teacher is taking classes for more than 10 subjects. But according to the Bar Council of India recommendations, a teacher cannot teach more than three subjects,” added Sumit.

Another student Richa Kumari pleaded to Chanchal and said: “If we complain against the vice-chancellor, he will penalise us in our examination. That’s what happened the last time when we tried to protest in front of his office. We are being cheated.

“When this university was established, we were really happy. We thought we would not need to go out of the state to study law. But it seems we took a wrong decision by choosing this institute. It does not even rank in the top 100 law universities in India,” said Richa.

She also said: “For the past five years, no company has visited the campus. The vice-chancellor should take responsibility for it. We want to raise the issue so that others can learn of it.

“We want the chief minister to intervene in the matter before it is too late. The future of several law students is at stake here. Proper inspection should be conducted at the university for a satisfactory solution,” she added.

Vice-chancellor Lakshminath said: “The allegations made by the students are completely baseless. They are frustrated and they want things to happen in a hurry but it does not happen like that.”

“We want them to become good lawyers before they enter the professional world. As far as the placements are concerned, we are trying our best to call good companies to the university,” added the vice-chancellor.

He also said: “It is not that we are not interested in calling companies for placements. In fact three or four companies have visited the campus. But their offers were not good enough and were not suitable for our students. I am trying my best to get good offers.”