The Central University of Punjab, Bathinda, established by Parliament under the Central Universities Act, 2009, introduced its five-year B.A.LL.B.(Hons.) programme only in 2024. The first batch has not yet reached its final year, let alone graduated. Even so, the University has already revised the fee structure for students joining in the 2026 academic session, and the revision is not a routine, inflation-linked adjustment. It is a structural change with a compounding effect that deserves a closer, and calmer, look than either quiet acceptance or blanket outrage.

Under the old fee structure that applied until now (2024 & 2025 Batch), a BA LL.B. student paid a one-time admission fee of ₹32,375, followed by a flat ₹24,925 in every odd semester and ₹18,625 in every even semester, right through the programme. For the 2026 batch onward, this has been replaced with a semester-specific structure that climbs every year, the details below: -

Two things stand out once the numbers are added. First, the total cost of the programme over five years rises from ₹2,25,200 to ₹2,92,009, an increase of ₹66,809, or roughly 29.7 percent. That is not "a mere 5 percent annual hike," and it is worth saying precisely, because loose comparisons, calling it modest, or calling it catastrophic, do a disservice to a discussion that should rest on arithmetic rather than adjectives.

Second, and less often noticed, the increase is not even spread. Measured against the old flat rates, Semester 1 costs 14.2 percent more, but by Semester 10 the gap has widened to 50.9 percent. A student who finds the first year manageable will, by the final year, be paying nearly half again what a student under the old structure paid at the same stage, precisely when families have already committed years of savings and the student's own earning capacity is still zero. An escalating structure has different implications for financial planning than a flat one, and that difference deserves to be explained, not left buried in a schedule.

The revision arrives at an interesting moment for the programme itself. Central University of Punjab was ranked 40th in the Law category of the NIRF 2025 rankings, a respectable placement for a programme barely two years old, though it is worth noting that NIRF's law list runs to only 40 institutions, so the University sits at the very foot of that ranked group. None of this makes a fee revision improper on its own. But it is a fair basis for students to ask what, specifically, the additional money will fund, more legal databases, better moot court infrastructure, stronger research support, since access to precisely these resources is what students say remains limited today. A fee hike and a resource gap can coexist without contradiction only if the University is willing to connect with the two publicly.

None of this means the University acted without any legitimate basis. Public universities across India have faced years of stagnant UGC grants, rising staff costs, and pressure to expand digital and physical infrastructure, the very things students rightly want more of. When Jawaharlal Nehru University revised its hostel charges in 2019, the administration pointed to roughly ₹10 crore a year in utility costs it had been quietly absorbing from general funds. Institutions do carry real, rising costs, and a central university recovering a fairer share of them is not, by itself, unfair or unlawful. The real question is not whether fees may rise. It is whether a rise of this size and shape was explained to the people paying it before it was imposed.

In Mohini Jain v. State of Karnataka, 1992 INSC 186, the Court held that the right to education flows from the right to life under Article 21, and that any fee charged in excess of what is reasonably justified by actual cost is, in substance, a capitation fee, and illegal, because it turns education into "a class privilege" rather than a right open to all. A decade later, in T.M.A. Pai Foundation v. State of Karnataka, 2002 INSC 455, an eleven-judge bench refined this position and held that institutions may recover reasonable costs, and even a reasonable surplus for growth, but may not engage in profiteering or the "commercialisation" of education. That principle was built for private, self-financing colleges. Post -TMA Pai, India witnessed a spurt in investments in education with an assured break even in 3 to 4 years.

Fee disputes at law school are not new, but they have sometimes ended badly for students. The National Law University, Delhi (NLUD) has almost doubled its total fee from the academic session 2023-24. The NLUD has faced criticism for the increase in fee structure from law students as well as those in the legal profession. Whereas, in 2019, National Law University, Odisha (NLUO) students went on an indefinite strike against the lack of infrastructure, administrative lethargy, unreasonable policies, lack of reform, and arbitrary fee hike. In October 2025, The Karnataka High Court quashed a circular issued by Karnataka State Law University (KSLU) enhancing the fee structure for registration of students for the 5-year and 3-year courses. The KSLU increased the fees from Rs. 3,700 to Rs. 8,580.

The affordability of legal eduaction in India has always been a matter of concern but still has not seen any significant measure from the government side. the fee hike divides the two groups of people. A law school occupies a slightly different position than other departments when a fairness question like this arises where its own students are trained, every day, to ask for reasons, to test decisions against process, and to expect institutions to show their work. A fee revision that is well-justified should have no difficulty surviving that scrutiny, and one that is not well-justified should not need to escape it.

Views are personal.