Ordinances – 33A

GENERAL
LL.M. Programme of Goa University with Choice Based Credit System of Instruction is to enable those students who have passed the LL.B. professional Programme, to seek academic excellence and to facilitate job opportunities, which require higher level of legal learning. The broad objective of the Ordinance is to restructure the LL.M. Programme to suit the present needs and to implement University Grants Commission recommendation of introducing Choice Based Credit System (CBCS).

DURATION AND SPECIALIZATIONS OF THE PROGRAMME
1. The LL.M. Programme shall be of two years duration with four Semesters. Each Semester shall have minimum of 15 weeks of teaching, excluding the break, vacation and examination.
2. The LL.M. Programme shall be offered in any one or more of the following Specializations:
(i) Criminal Law
(ii) Intellectual Property Rights
(iii) Corporate and Commercial Law
(iv) Constitution and Administrative Law
(v) Labour and Industrial Law

ADMISSION AND ELIGIBILITY
1. (Notified on 25th July, 2017) To be eligible for admission to the LL.M. Programme, a candidate shall be required to have obtained a minimum of 50% marks in aggregate (45% in case of SC and ST candidates) at the 5 years or 3 years LL.B. Programme, recognized by the Bar Council of India.
(Notified on 4th December, 2019)
1. A candidate who has obtained a degree in Law securing at least 50% aggregate marks (45% in case of SC and ST candidates) or equivalent grade from Goa University or from any other University recognized by Goa University is eligible to seek admission for LL.M. program.
2. Admission to the LL.M. Programme shall be based on merit. The Merit List shall be prepared, based on the highest score obtained by the candidate at the 5 years or 3 years LL.B. Programme.
3. Colleges offering the LL.M. Programme may choose from amongst the above Specializations. Colleges must expressly mention on their website and the prospectus about the Specializations offered, at the beginning of each Academic Year.
4. Students shall opt for any one of the Specializations offered by the College, at the time of admission to the Programme. The selected candidates shall be admitted by the College in the specified Specialization in the First Semester itself based on merit and the availability of seats.
5. Reservation of seats shall be in accordance with the directives of the Government of Goa and as adopted by Goa University. A candidate applying for admission under these categories shall be required to submit a valid certificate to that effect, issued by the Officer of the rank of the Deputy Collector or any other authorized Officer as notified by the State Government.

SCHEME OF INSTRUCTION
1. The instructional scheme for the LL.M. Degree Programme shall be based on the system of time-integrated units called Credits. To be eligible for the award of a Degree under the Choice Based Credit System (CBCS), a student shall be required to earn a minimum of 48 Credits.
2. One Credit Theory Course shall be equivalent to 15 contact hours of learning activities such as lectures, group discussion, seminars, problem solving, tutorials and assessment. For example, A Four Credit Course shall have 60 contact hours (4 hours per week x 15 weeks) of these learning activities.
3. The Credits shall comprise of Core Courses, Optional Courses and Dissertation. The Programme shall have Core Courses of 32 Credits, Optional Courses compulsorily of 8 Credits and a compulsory dissertation comprising of 8 Credits. An adequate number of Optional Courses shall be offered to choose from, as recommended by the Board of Studies (BoS) and approved by the Academic Council, in order to earn the 8 Optional Credits. In case a student opts for an Optional Course from outside the parent College, such Course shall be decided by the Departmental Faculty Committee (DFC), as specified under clause OC33A.6.8.
4. A student shall be eligible for the award of LL.M. Degree on the successful completion of 48 Credits. A student is also permitted to obtain maximum 8 additional Credits (48 + 8 = Total of 56 credits). However, the Degree/final Grade shall be awarded /computed based on his/her performance in Core Courses, and the best performance of the Optional Courses required to fulfill the minimum number of Credits for the award of the LL.M. Degree. Additional Credits, if any, shall however, be depicted in the final transcript/mark sheet.
5. A student is required to obtain a minimum of 40 Credits from the parent Institute, at which the student is registered, of which 32 would be the minimum number of Core Credits and Dissertation of 8 credits. The remaining 8 Credits may be earned by the student by choosing from Optional Courses either from the parent Institute or any other Institute.
6. Permission to transfer Credits in case of Institutions not affiliated to Goa University, may be allowed on a case to case basis by the Departmental Faculty Committee (DFC). Such Courses, when opted for by the students, may be approved provisionally by the DFC, as specified under clause OC-33A.6.8 and placed for ratification before the Board of Studies at its subsequent meeting.

COURSE STRUCTURE
1. The Colleges shall notify all the Core and Optional Courses offered to students before the beginning of the Academic Year. The Colleges shall also provide adequate Optional Courses in case the student desires to obtain all Credits from the parent College. In addition, BoS may identify Courses for self-learning in
the form of field work, project, summer training, online Courses, and other such Optional Courses. In such cases the BoS shall specify the Credits for each of these activities.
2. The Semester-wise flow chart of Courses is as under:

3. An Optional Course may consist of 1 to 6 numbers of Credit(s).
4. A student is required to choose not less than 8 credits and not more than 16 Credits in a Semester. However, a student may not take up any of the Courses earmarked in a Semester and defer the same till such Semester when the concerned Courses are next offered by the College.
5. A student is required to choose the Optional Courses before the beginning of the Semester. Minimum number of students for an Optional Course shall not be less than five.
6. Ordinarily, one teacher shall teach an entire Course. When more than one teacher is teaching a Course, the senior most teacher amongst them, shall be the Course Coordinator for that Course. The Course outline/session plan for each Course offered during the Semester shall be submitted by the concerned
teacher/Course Coordinator to the Departmental Faculty Committee (DFC) as specified under clause OC-33A.6.8, before the commencement of teaching of the said Course.
7. The BoS shall prepare the objectives, themes and topics for all Courses and recommend it for the approval of the Academic Council. All such approved Courses, either Core or Optional, shall be uploaded on the College Website prior to offering of the respective Courses.
8. Departmental Faculty Committee:
The Principal of the College, Head of the Department (HoD), and two senior most full-time teachers of the College, appointed on regular basis and teaching in the LL.M. Programme shall constitute the DFC. Each College shall constitute DFC, which shall be responsible for the proper implementation and conduct of
the Choice based Credit LL.M. Degree Programme.

DISSERTATION

1. The Dissertation work shall be spread over third and fourth Semesters. The DFC shall decide at the end of the second Semester, the modalities relating to the Dissertation, which shall be informed to the students.
2. Topics for dissertations shall be finalized by the student in consultation with the DFC before the end of the second Semester.
3. The DFC shall decide the number of students each teacher can guide, preferably, with an equitable distribution of students to Guides.
4. Dissertation being 8 Credit Course, a student is required to engage 120 hours on dissertation work, of which at least 10% (12 hours) shall be compulsorily spent on consultation with the Guide, who shall supervise the student on a regular basis.
5. The final Dissertation shall be screened for Similarity Test as per the University norms.
6. The student shall declare, in the prescribed proforma, that the dissertation is his/her own work and that all the sources used are duly acknowledged.
7. The Guide shall certify, in the prescribed proforma, that the dissertation is an original work of the candidate completed under his/her supervision.
8. The student shall submit the dissertation to the College through the Guide, at least two weeks before the end of the term, which shall be notified by the DFC.
9. Every student shall submit one soft copy in CD and two hard bound copies of the dissertation to the College in the standard format as prescribed by the DFC.

SCHEME OF EXAMINATION
1. The assessment of all Courses shall comprise continuous Intra-Semester Assessment (ISA) and Semester-End Assessment (SEA). The ISA shall be assessed internally by the concerned teacher(s) and the SEA shall be conducted by the University. Provided that if a student chooses any course from an Institute other than the parent Institute, the scores/grades communicated by such other Institute, based on their assessment, shall be accepted by the parent Institute.
2. For each theory Course, Intra-Semester Assessment (ISA) shall be 30% and Semester-End Assessment (SEA) shall be 70%. ISA shall be conducted by assignment, presentation, projects, case reviews and such other as approved by the DFC and the SEA shall be a written component only. However, the Core Course on Legal Education and Legal Pedagogy offered at second Semester shall have 50% of ISA and the remainder 50% of SEA.
3. A One Credit Course shall carry 25 marks. All other Courses shall carry marks proportionate to the number of Credits. For example a four credit course shall carry 4×25=100 marks.
4. In case of ISA, each teacher of the concerned Course shall be the examiner for the portion he/she has taught. When more than one teacher is teaching a Course, the Course Coordinator shall coordinate the teaching, examination and continuous evaluation of ISA of the Course and maintain records of all assessments/tests/ examinations.

SCHEME OF EVALUATION
1. Each component of ISA shall be evaluated for 10% of the total marks of the Course. Total number of ISA components for any Course, other than a one credit course, shall be three, irrespective of the number of Credits in the course, except the Core Course on Legal Education and Legal Pedagogy offered at the Second Semester, which shall be of five components. However, for a One Credit Course, a single ISA component shall be conducted and evaluated for 30% of total marks of the Course. The Course-wise ISA schedule shall be displayed at the beginning of each Semester. The scheme of assessment and the marks allotted for various components of ISA shall be submitted to the HoD before the commencement of the relevant Semester. The result of each assessment shall be displayed on the Notice Board and the assessed material shall be shown to the candidate(s) by the concerned teacher and submitted to the HoD.
2. An additional assessment for components of ISA, irrespective of the number ofCredits a Course carries, may be provided at the request of the concernedstudent for the purpose of improvement, in which case, the assessment withthe least score shall not be considered for ISA. Institution may charge anexamination fee for such additional assessment. All internal assessments shallbe completed as per the schedule notified by the DFC.
3. At the end of each Semester, the ISA scores shall be verified by the DFC and thereafter sent to the Controller of Examinations (CoE). However, all such assessment shall be completed in all respects and communicated to the CoE before the commencement of SEA.
4.SEA shall be through Central Assessment Programme (CAP) conducted by the University.
(Notified on 16th February, 2022)
5. Each of the theory papers shall be evaluated by two examiners separately (One External and one Internal). The average of the marks awarded by the two examiners shall be considered as the marks secured by the candidate. In case the difference between the assessments is more than 15% of the maximum marks allotted to the paper, a third evaluation shall be conducted and the average of the best two out of the three scores shall be considered as the final marks secured by the candidate in the paper/subject.
(Notified on 16th February, 2022)
6. In case of Optional Courses opted outside the parent Institute, the final Course grade shall be as per the assessment scheme of such other Institute. In all such cases, the score/grade given by such other Institute shall be sent to the parent Institute and the DFC shall forward the same to CoE for declaring result.
(Notified on 16th February, 2022)
7. For all Courses, a student is required to pass both ISA and SEA separately, with a minimum of 40%. Students securing less than 40% marks either in ISA or SEA will be declared as fail. Student cannot appear for SEA without passing in ISA. Students who have either been declared failed in ISA even after improvement or who have not appeared in ISA, may appear for ISA only when ISA in that Course is next offered by the College.
(Notified on 16th February, 2022)
8. Fractional marks shall be rounded off to the nearest integer only at the time of calculating the Course grade.

(effective from 26th September, 2003) Evaluation
1. The dissertation shall be assessed by a panel of three examiners, consisting of the Guide and two external examiners from the panel recommended by the BoS. The student shall make a presentation of the work before the panel of examiners and students of the College. The dissertation shall be assessed for a total of 200 marks, of which 50 marks shall be for the presentation and viva voce and 150 marks shall be for the dissertation submitted. The average marks of the panel of all three examiners shall be considered for the grade.
2. To pass in the dissertation, a student has to secure a minimum grade of ‗P‘ as indicated under OC-33A.11(i).
3. A student who fails in the dissertation may be allowed to re-submit the dissertation after incorporating suitable modifications under the supervision of the Guide, in any subsequent Semester Examination.

STANDARD OF PASSING
(i) Award of Grades
1. Marks awarded in each Course shall be represented in the form of Grades. The final result shall be declared as Grade Points.
2. The marks awarded in the ISA and SEA shall be added for awarding the grade for each Course. The percentage of marks and the corresponding grades for the Courses are indicated in the table below:

3. A student shall be required to secure a minimum of ‗P‘ grade to pass the Course.
4. For each Course, a student securing ‗F‘ Grade in the Course, shall not be entitled to earn any Credits for that Course.
5. Students who do not secure a minimum of ‗P‘ Grade in Core Courses shall have the option of answering SEA or to repeat the Course by registering for the Course whenever it is offered in the regular Semester.
6. In the case of Optional Courses, a student shall have the option of answering SEA in theory, as well as practical component, where applicable, in the following Semester(s),or to repeat the Course by registering for the Course whenever it is offered in the regular Semester, or register for an alternative Optional Course to secure requisite number of Credits.

(ii) Semester Grade Point Average (SGPA) and Cumulative Grade Points Average (CGPA)
1. Calculation of weighted grade points of a course shall be done by multiplying the grade points scored, by the number of Credits of the respective course.
2. Calculation of Semester Grade Point Average (SGPA) The SGPA is the ratio of sum of the product of the number of credits with the grade points scored by a student in all the courses taken by a student and the sum of the number of credits of all the courses undergone by a student, i.e.

SGPA (Si) = ∑(Ci x Gi) / ∑Ci

Where ‗Ci‘ is the number of credits of the ith course and ‗Gi‘ is the grade point
scored by the student in the ith course
3. Calculation of Cumulative Grade Point Average (CGPA) The CGPA is also calculated in the same manner taking into account all the courses undergone by a student over all the Semesters of this Programme, i.e.

CGPA = ∑(Ci x Si) / ∑ Ci

Where ‗Si‘ is the SGPA of the ith semester and ‗Ci‘ is the total number of credits in that semester.
4. At the end of the Semester IV on completion of 48 Credits, or more, Cumulative Grade Point Average (CGPA) shall be calculated as shown in OA33A.11.(ii)3 For calculating CGPA all the courses taken and all the credits and grades earned by a candidate shall be taken into account.
5. The CGPA shall be converted to the Final grade, as shown in the table below

6. The SGPA and CGPA shall be rounded off to 2 decimal points and reported in the transcripts.
7. The CGPA shall be calculated up to two decimal places. If the CGPA is higher than the indicated upper limit in the two decimal digits by a factor of ≥0.005, then the higher grade will be awarded. Eg. A candidate with CGPA ≥4.995 will be awarded ‗C‘ grade. A candidate who has not earned 48 Credits shall be
given final grade ‗F‘ and be declared ‗Fail‘.
8. Students, who have not completed the Programme in four Semesters, arepermitted to re-register for additional Semester(s) and opt for Courses, provided that these Courses are available for instruction in the Department. Such candidate(s) shall be treated as supernumerary for the particular Course.

IMPROVING THE CGPA
1. A candidate shall be permitted to improve upon his/her CGPA, subject to the following conditions:
(i) The candidate should be declared passed in LL.M. Degree Examination.
(ii) The candidate shall have only one opportunity to appear for SEA of any of the Core Course in any Semester of his/her choice in the immediate Examination.
(iii) However, the candidate is not allowed to reappear for any Optional Courses or the dissertation.
(iv) In case the reappeared grade is lesser than the grade scored at the earlier Examination, the earlier grade shall be final.
(v) Revised grade shall not be considered for any awards or medals except for awarding the CGPA.

RADE CERTIFICATE
1. Based on the Grades earned, a Grade Certificate shall be issued by the University to all the registered students after every Semester. The Grade Certificate shall display the course details (code, title, number of Credits, Grade secured) along with SGPA of that Semester.
2. After completion of the LL.M. Programme a consolidated Grade Certificate indicating the performance in all Semesters and CGPA earned shall be issued to all the registered students by the University.

ACADEMIC AUDIT COMMITTEE (AAC)
1. There shall be an audit of the LL.M. Programme, annually conducted by an Academic Audit Committee (AAC). For this purpose, an AAC shall be constituted for each College.
2. The AAC consisting of three members shall be nominated by the ViceChancellor from the panel of experts prepared by the BoS and approved by the Academic Council.
3. The audit shall be conducted at the end of every Academic Year, within two months after the declaration of results.
4. The conduct of the academic audit by the AAC shall comprises of:

5. The AAC shall prepare a report and submit the same to the Vice-Chancellor, who, after making necessary observations, shall forward the same to the BoS of the concerned subject. The BoS shall make suitable recommendations to the DFC for implementation.
6. The Principal shall co-ordinate the meeting of the AAC.

GRIEVANCE COMMITTEE
1. There shall be Grievance Committee of three teachers, Principal as the Chairperson, Head of the Department and the Senior most faculty members as other two members. No teacher against whom a grievance is made, shall participate in the meetings of the Committee.
2. The Grievance Committee shall examine and decide on the grievances relating to the marking of answer-scripts/evaluation of tests of the students. The Committee may also consider any other matter related to examination and evaluation.
3. A student shall address his/her grievance(s) to the Principal, who shall place the same before the Grievance Committee for resolution. If the grievances are in the Course(s) taught by the Chairperson, the grievances shall be addressed to the Dean of the Faculty.
4. If the Grievance Committee finds that there is a prima facie case, it may refer the respective answer-scripts/ assignments, to an expert outside the University, for which the student shall have to pay the prescribed fee. The result of such an evaluation shall be final and binding.
5. The decision of the Grievance Committee shall be communicated to the student within one month of his/her filing of the grievance.

COORDINATION COMMITTEE
1. There shall be a Coordination Committee for this Programme with representatives of the Colleges.
2. The Vice-Chancellor shall appoint a Coordination Committee which shall comprise the Dean of Faculty as Chairperson and four members from the Colleges (two from each) other than the Dean.
3. The Committee shall coordinate implementation of the Programme, and resolve anomalies arising during the implementation of the Programme. The Committee shall draw a common time-table for Optional Courses offered acrossthe Departments, so as to enable students to opt for various Courses.
4. The Committee shall consider suggestions received from students, HoDs, Faculty members, BoS and the Examination Section, and recommend modification of existing provisions or introduction of new provisions.
5. At the end of the teaching of every Semester there shall be an assessment of the teacher, the Course-taught and of the overall Programme by the student(s), the records of which shall be retained by the Internal Quality Assurance Cell (IQAC).