Cuttack, May 18: Legal luminaries, including president of Bar Association of India Anil B. Diwan, today called upon the students of National Law University here to be more responsible towards the cause of the society.

“I urge them to cater to the needs of the society and at the same time be more responsible towards the greater cause of the nation,” said Diwan while speaking at the first convocation of the state’s premier law institute here today.

The first batch of students graduated from National Law University Odisha (NLUO), was conferred with degrees today. Over 113 graduates, including 10 LLM and three PhD students, were conferred with gold medals on the occasion by chancellor and Orissa High Court Chief Justice A.K. Goel.

The university, established in 2009 in Cuttack, has two undergraduate programmes—BA LLB (honours) and BBA LLB (honours) with an annual intake of 60 students for each course. The university also offers one year LLM programme with an intake of 25 students and at present there 10 candidates have registered for the PhD programme.

“Our young lawyers have taken up a host of welfare works to address various issues in the society,” said vice-chancellor professor V. Nagaraj.

Nagaraj said that the placement of students for 2014 academic session had been made compulsory in the varsity and already over 20 students have been recruited by top law firms in the country.

Adequate measures have been taken to maintain an ideal student and teacher ratio at NLUO.

Besides, efforts have already begun to create a mechanism to resolve the shortage of law teachers. The varsity is planning to introduce an MPhil course in imparting law, which law students can take up soon after their LLM degree.

The MPhil programme will start with seven seats while the applicants will be selected based on a national-level entrance examination.

In a bid to impart practical skills to the students and budding lawyers, NLUO has already started 15 centres including eight centres for extending services to the disadvantage sections of the society and ensure that the students get the real glimpse of the happenings in our day-to-day life.

United Nations Development Programme is supporting most of the centres for a period of three years and the organisation has sanctioned Rs 63 lakh for the ambitious project.