Gujarat Law Society aims to become a private university

After being under Gujarat University for 87 years, the Gujarat Law Society (GLS) is now aiming for independent university status. The trustees of the GLS have written to the state education department seeking the status of a private university for the law society.

If granted the status, the GLS plans to commence operations from the academic year starting June 2015.

Executive vice-president of GLS, Sudhir Nanavati, said that, in the first phase, they plan to bring five self-financed colleges under the proposed GLS University. "These colleges will offer courses in Commerce, BBA, BCA, MBA and MCA. We plan to set up centres of excellence in all the five colleges," Nanavati said.

About 18 colleges with 23,000 students are currently associated withe GLS, of which, 40% colleges are grant-in-aid institutions while the rest are self-financed. "We shall retain our name, GLS, for the new university and initially function from the Law Garden campus. Later, we plan to shift to a plot beside SG Highway," Nanavati said.

Sources in the GLS said that for the last one year, the law society had been preparing for this change in status. "We prepared a detailed proposal of 400 pages which has now been submitted to the state government," a source said. The governing board of GLS has approved the proposal and, much like Ahmedabad University (AU) that was set up by Ahmedabad Education Society, GLS will function on similar lines.

Ahmedabad University was the first to delink itself from Gujarat University. AES and GLS were the two top college conglomerates which used to be part of GU with 350 colleges and 3.5 lakh students.