Registration of the IDIA Trust

Friday, the 4^th of February 2011 was a momentous day for IDIA. For this was the day when the IDIA trust came into being, comprising of:

Prof. M.P.Singh, Vice Chancellor, WBNUJS

Justice Ruma Pal, ex Supreme CourtJjudge

Shishira Rudrappa, Founder, Bar and Bench

Shamnad Basheer, Ministry of HRD Professor of IP Law, WB NUJS

The trust deed appoints Prof. Shamnad Basheer as the first managing trustee.

The first meeting of the IDIA trust was held on the very same day at the National University of Juridical Science, Kolkata. The meeting was attended by all the trustees, namely, Prof. M.P.Singh, Prof. Shamnad Basheer, Mrs Ruma Pal and Shishira Rudrappa and also by the IDIA team leaders and volunteers present at NUJS. The meeting started with Prof. Basheer introducing the trustees to some of the IDIA team leaders and volunteers and thereafter each team leader was called upon to introduce his/her chapter and team before the trustees, in order to give them a fair idea about the work that has been undertaken by each of the chapters of IDIA.

Before the commencement of the presentations, the IDIA brochure prepared by Vivek Verma and Diptoshree Basu was handed out to each trustee.

The first presentation was by Diptoshree Basu who leads the Diversity at Home chapter and North East chapter of IDIA, followed by Arnab Roy who presented on the WB IDIA team. Thereafter Kumar Kislay introduced the IDIA Jitholi chapter to the trustees, Anusha Reddy on the Hyderabad chapter and Gazala on the Kashmir chapter. Priyanka Raj and Avisha Gupta presented on the training and question banks being created by IDIA for CLAT 2011. Prajna Mohapatra who heads the research and policy wing of IDIA elaborated on the various aspects on which IDIA has undertaken research and assisted the CLAT Committee 2011 to take decisions and make welcome modifications to CLAT 2011 paper.

After the presentation, Prof. Basheer introduced the other functional chapters of IDIA (such as Karnataka, Rajasthan etc) whose team leaders were not able to attend the meeting . Thereafter, the trustees interacted with the student volunteers and asked questions pertaining to the day to day functioning of the project. Mrs Ruma Pal suggested that IDIA must provide interest free loans to the IDIA scholars instead of providing full scholarships to them, given the current status of funds for the project. She also asked the students whether they have any provision for selecting girls as a part of the diversity objective. Mr. Rudrappa stressed on the need to document all the processes at IDIA so that it is easier for future teams to co-ordinate with each other and conduct all the processes without depending on any particular individual. Prof Basheer assured them that documentationwas being undertaken by each chapter and uniform formats being used by them to make the process more homogenous.

He also put forward the proposal of appointing a full time CEO from May 2011 who will oversee the functioning of the project on an all India basis.

The IDIA team thanks Debanjan Mandal, Sourav Bhagat and Paroma Ghosh of Fox Mandal Associates, Kolkata for their help in drafting and registering the trust.