The domicile quota debate

NLSIU Bangalore's land deal fetched CLAT 2025 aspirants 10 more seats in a premier law school. Domicile quotas in RGNUL, MNLU, GNLU, NALSAR and others, their varying criteria, remain a fractious issue

- Musab Qazi

Aspirants writing the Common Law Entrance Test (CLAT 2025) on December 1 suddenly had the seats open to them at the National Law School of Indian University (NLSIU) Bangalore, increased in November. The oldest 'national' law school in the country agreed to add 10 supernumerary seats in its undergraduate programme for students hailing from Karnataka.

The move was in exchange for seven acres of land being given to the institute by the Bangalore University. These seats will be in addition to the 25% of seats already reserved for local candidates at NLSIU Bangalore since 2021.

The openly transactional move, which followed negotiations between the state and university authorities as well as the nowretired Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud, has further cemented Karnataka and even other state governments' position in the matters of seat distribution at their respective National Law Universities (NLUs) and consolidated domicile quotas at these institutes, despite long-standing opposition from students, alumni and the management.

Established all around the nation over the last four decades, the 27 NLUs are deemed as exemplar institutes dedicated to improving the standard of legal education in the country. Indeed, many of them, especially the older ones, continue to feature at the top of ranking tables and are among the most soughtafter study destinations for budding lawyers and legal scholars.

The NLUs are viewed to be in the same league as other institutes of national importance, especially the Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) and the Indian Institutes of Management (IIM). Also like them, they hold a national entrance test, the Common Law Admission Test (CLAT exam) for admissions and coordinate amongst themselves through the Consortium of NLUs.