Chief Justice S Muralidhar advises Odisha law graduates to fight injustice

CUTTACK:  Chief Justice of Orissa High Court Justice S Muralidhar on Saturday advised the graduates of National Law University of Odisha (NLUO) to distinguish between law as a career and law as a service, and use it as a tool to fight injustice.

Presiding over the 7th convocation of students of NLUO, Justice Muralidhar who is also the Chancellor of the university said life is full of possibilities and challenges.

“Therefore you must learn to respect others’ choices, maintain civility, inclusivity and pluralism and never violate the Constitutional principles,” he said.

Speaking about the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on education, the Chief Justice said distance learning was earlier an exception but now it has become the principal mode of education, particularly for law schools.

Eminent writer Dr Pratibha Ray encouraged the students to harness their power of imagination and analysis to inculcate the value of making right choices at every level of responsibility.

Vice-Chancellor Prof Ved Kumari highlighted how the university teachers, staff and students alike, have adapted to the new challenges of the pandemic to the extent of not only restructuring classes, but also examinations, organising international seminars and conferences.

“We are equipped to tackle any future challenges that are likely to come our way, given how we fared in this recent trial by fire. Do not ever give up in the face of adversity. This is your biggest takeaway from the pandemic as you are the first outgoing batch whose classes were disrupted by its onslaught and you have come out of it as winners,” Prof Kumari told the students.

As many as 149 graduates were awarded degrees, including 36 LLM, 58 and 53 candidates respectively from the BA LLB and BBA LLB streams.

Twenty gold medals were awarded to students and seven of them were bagged by Rakshita Agarwal alone.

She has been awarded with ML Mitra Memorial gold medal for first rank in BBA LLB (Hons), State Bank of India gold medal for highest score in banking law, Ananta Misra & Annapurna Misra gold medal for Best All-Round Female Student, Satyakamal Memorial gold medal for highest score in personal law, Pavani Easwara Lakshmi Memorial gold medal, the Smart Chip gold medal as well as the Institute of Company Secretary gold medal for girl student securing highest score in BBA LLB and alternative dispute resolution.

Among others, sitting Judges of Orissa High Court, senior advocates, judicial officers, NLUO registrar Prof Yogesh Pratap Singh were present. Around 89 students received the degrees physically while the others attended the event virtually.