A section of the NLIU Bhopal Alumni comunity has dissociated itself from the statement that was issued against the Citizenship Amendment Act by some ex-students in the name of ‘NLIU Alumni Body’.

Dissociating themselves from the statement, 138 alumni of the institution have said that they condemn the “the presumption against selective state authorities without due investigation” and “the presumption of unconstitutionality of the Citizenship Amendment Act”.

Here’s the full statement:

The following statement is necessitated from the better half of the NLIU Community in light of the recent statement, by select alumni of NLIU.

The said statement has been misrepresented to be a statement on behalf of the official NLIU Alumni Association or a representation of opinion of all/majority of NLIU students or Alumni.

We unequivocally state that WE DO NOT AGREE WITH THE SAID “NLIU ALUMNI SOLIDARITY STATEMENT” and would like to clarify our stand on the issues mentioned.

We, the undersigned alumni of National Law Institute University, Bhopal, at the outset, condemn ALL VIOLENCE that may have taken place. NO VIOLENCE can ever or must be justified whether on part of students, the protestors or the State Authorities.

We cherish and recognise the right to free speech and assembly and at the same time seek to protect our academic institution from overt politicisation. Our academic institution and the Alumni Associations must first persevere towards betterment of NLIU community and to the extent possible, must remain shy and circumspect of politicisation of student and the alumni community, at the cost of independence of thought and expression within the NLIU community.

We recognise and respect the constitutional order in the country and the democratically elected governments at the State and the Central level. We recognise that there may be different cases of purported violence taking place, whether in and around University campuses or beyond them, which cannot all be coloured with the same brush.

We CONDEMN THE PRESUMPTION AGAINST SELECTIVE STATE AUTHORITIES without due investigation especially when the subject matter is sub-judice before the Hon’ble High Courts of respective States.

We unequivocally express that we are responsible and more importantly, reasonable persons, and do not seeks to make any presumptions, either against the State authorities or the students.

We, as lawyers, have been taught the rules of investigation and the advantages of an adversarial system, which works as a strong safeguard against such biased one-sided presumptions.

We seek to do justice to the education we received at our beloved University and not become POLITICAL PAWNS, on either side of the spectrum. In this vein, we vehemently condemn the presumption of unconstitutionality of the Citizenship Amendment Act, 2019.

We do not wish to comment on the constitutionality of the same either. We merely seek to clarify, as we have been taught in law school, that there is a PRESUMPTION OF CONSTITUTIONALITY OF ANY STATUTE validly enacted unless the same is declared unconstitutional by the Hon’ble Courts.

We recognise and respect the constitutional ethos including, diversity, inclusivity, pluralism and secularism and at the same time we recognise the argument on the other side regarding the plight of minority communities in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh.

We cannot ignore that the problem of illegal immigration in the country has been noted by the Hon’ble Supreme Court in numerous judgments which has also recognised the sovereign right and duty of the Government to expel such illegal migrant as per the process and procedure under the Citizenship Act, 1955 and the Foreigners Act, 1946.

Any presumption, of “egregious unconstitutionality”, is merely one side of the debate and something, which we as responsible lawyers, must not make. Be that as it may, we understand that the challenge to the constitutionality of the CAA is pending before the Hon’ble Supreme Court which would be the ultimate arbiter in the matter.

We disagree with the HIGHLY CONJECTURAL CONTENT OF THE STATEMENT without ascertaining the crux of the issue. To conclude, we strongly believe in constitutional rights of students and protestors and the coincidental constitutional restrictions on the same.

More importantly, we believe and respect the DUE PROCESS OF LAW and do not seek to make irresponsible and ill-informed statements without the ascertainment of issues by impartial arbiters.

We condemn the language and content of the previous statement which makes slurs against the purported “majoritarian thought” and alleged silencing of “dissenting voices”.

We believe that India is a HEALTHY DEMOCRACY and we seek to affirm the rights of peaceful assembly and the freedom of thought, speech and expression of India across students in Universities in India.

In that light, we also seek to affirm and express our own right to dissent and disagree with the previous statement issues in the name of “NLIU Alumni”.

The statement unfortunately, maybe without intention, paints the entire NLIU community with the same opinion. While we must respect the diversity of opinion in the country but we must also respect and reaffirm the DIVERSITY OF OPINION WITHIN THE NLIU COMMUNITY.

We urge everyone to engage in a civil debate and not seek to stifle the diversity of opinions within the NLIU community.

In solidarity. Responsible Alumni, National Law Institute University, Bhopal

DISCLAIMER: This statement has been issued by select alumni of National Law Institute University, Bhopal and does not in any manner reflect the official position of National Law Institute University, Bhopal regarding this matter, whatever that maybe.

The list of alumni (with batch years) who have signed the clarificatory statement:

Sudhanshu Rai 1999
Saurabh Mishra 1999
Yashraj Bardhan 2003
BD 2004
Vinay Tyagi 2005
Prakash Upadhyay 2005
Vivek Chauhan 2005
Anuj Trivedi 2005
Abhishek Kumar Singh 2006
Siddharth R Gupta 2006
Deepu Krishna 2006
Vaibhav Joshi 2007
Sandeep Kumar 2008
Mohit Kant Singh 2008
Ajay Dhawle 2010
Harshavardhan Topre 2010
Rajat Mittal 2010
Tarjana Rsi 2010
Shantanu Tyagi 2011
Swapnil Gupta 2011
Anant Raj Kannojiya 2011
Shantanu Tyagi 2011
Guru Prakash 2011
Ravi Vaswani 2011
Nitish Kant Sharma 2011
Rijoy Bhaumik 2012
Aditya Khandekar 2012
Siddharth Sharma 2012
Varnan Shrivastava 2012
Arushi Gaur Chauhan 2012
Sarthak Rastogi 2012
Apurv Mishra 2012
Harsh Garg 2012
Abhay Raj Singh Chauhan 2013
Suyash Thakur 2013
Katyayini Sharma 2013
Tushar Markam 2013
Adhitya Srinivasan 2013
Nidhi Khare 2013
Harshit Saxena 2013
Akshay Amritanshu 2014
Stanzin Chosphel 2014
Kanu Agrawal 2014
Deepti Arya 2014
Abhinay Kumar Shukla 2014
Baibhaw Gahlaut 2014
Ayush 2014
Dhanendra Patel 2014
Anindita Barman 2014
Dhruv Varma 2014
Durva Chaturvedi 2014
Suvir Sharma 2014
Abhinav Tiwari 2014
Radhika Indapurkar 2014
Barkha Singhai 2014
Dhanendra Patel 2014
Samapika Biswal 2014
Vipin Upadhyay 2014
Ankit Akodiya 2015
Varun 2015
Aveek Chakravarty 2015
Varun Mehta 2015
Vasu Nigam 2015
Shubham Gautam 2015
Aditya Vijay Singh 2015
Shashwat Sharma 2015
Akshat Rajoria 2015
Ayush Thaosen 2015
Ila Shrivastri 2015
Hitesh Khichi 2015
Shivang Sinha 2015
Manish Khoker 2015
Rudra P S Solanki 2015
Stuti Shrivastava 2015
Ashish Singh Tomar 2015
Kratik Mandloi 2016
Rohan Harne 2016
Shashank Shrivastava 2016
Raghav Khurana 2016
Pulkit Singh Rahangdale 2016
Pratik Saraswat 2016
Priyal Jain 2016
Sanchit Asthana 2016
Alok Mishra 2016
Gaurav Kumar Sen 2016
Sidharth Sharma 2016
Srideepa Bhattacharyya 2016
Arindam Bhattacharjee 2016
Satyaditya Singh Dhakare 2016
Nikita Goyal 2016
Shubham Borkar 2017
Swati Arya 2017
Shivank Virmani 2017
Mahendra 2017
Shantnu Chourasia 2017
Balaji Saikrishnan 2017
Madhura Khandekar 2017
Soumya 2017
Dushyant Singh 2017
Prakhar Nayak 2017
Dheeresh Kumar Dwivedi 2017
Dharmendra Raghuvanshi 2017
Shivani Pandey 2017
Nikita Upadhyaya 2017
Pallavi Payal Verma 2017
Ambuj Swaroop 2017
Parul Dhurvey 2017
SN 2017
Utkarsh Saxena 2017
Priyamvada Mishra 2017
Richa 2017
Siddharth Sharma 2017
Deepak Khadiya 2018
Drona Negi 2018
Anuj Shrivastava 2018
Samagra Srivastava 2018
Rishabh Chawla 2018
Shivesh Kumar Tripathi 2018
Rajat Gupta 2018
Addway Bandyopadhyay 2018
Kunal Sharma 2018
Ranjan Pathak 2018
Sachin Arora 2018
Milind Mohul Ghosh 2018
Deeksha Malik 2018
Shivam Tripathi 2018
Rohil Tigga 2018
Avishkar Verma 2019
Arushi Sharma 2019
Rishabh Halwai 2019
Kanishk Devesh Sharma 2019
Snehil Pandey 2019
Shilpi Menon 2019
Rohit Gattani 2019
Arpit Shivhare 2019
Diptiman Acharyya 2019
Radhika Garg 2019
Anchal Chhallani 2019