The Aligarh Muslim University has consistently submitted incorrect and misleading law placement data to boost its national ranking and National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) under the Ministry of Education, let it happen, according to a report by The Leaflet.
The NIRF ranking plays a key role for a university. Not just helping with its perception or reputation, but building the foundation on which it can present its selling points to students and parents and get ahead of other universities.
Launched in 2015, the annual NIRF ranking is a framework that outlines a methodology to rank institutions across the country. It ranks colleges and universities based on five parameters: Teaching, Learning and Resources (TLR), Research and Professional Practice (RP), Graduation Outcomes (GO), Outreach and Inclusivity (OI), and Peer Perception.
AMU has a five-year Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Legislative Law (Honours) programmes at its main Faculty of Law campus as well as two off-campus institutes in Kerala’s Malappuram and in Murshidabad, West Bengal. It has 240 students graduating each year, with 60 seats in each off-campus centre and 120 in the main Aligarh campus.
The university ranked 9th in the 2025 NIRF ranking, where the top four law schools were listed as National Law School of India University, Bangalore; National Law University, Delhi; NALSAR University, Hyderabad; and the National University of Juridical Sciences, West Bengal.
It scored lower than the top universities in the teaching, resources, research, and perception categories — parameters that reflect the actual quality of an institution.
In the Graduation Outcomes (GO) parameter, which accounts for 14-16 per cent of a university’s final score, AMU scored 93.26 out of 100, higher than the top four universities by a large margin.
GO measures the number of graduates who get placed through the university and the salary they are paid, and one of the categories where the data is collected directly from what the university reports. By manipulating the records of placements and salaries of the outgoing batches, a university can significantly increase its standing in the national ranking, even if it scores lower in other parameters.
A high NIRF ranking makes a university more influential amid the competitive educational field; it becomes a source for counselling portals and admission discussions. More importantly for the university, the benefits include increased research grants, an increased number of projects, and stronger academic networks.
According to the Leaflet report, AMU submitted that for the 2023-24 batch, 182 out of 218 graduates were placed with a median salary of Rs 12,50,000. In the previous year, 184 of its 217 graduates were placed, with the same median. In 2024-25, 185 were placed out of 219, again with the same median salary.
The report points out that when the number of students placed is added to the number of students pursuing higher education, the total is every undergraduate of the five-year BA LLB programme. That means every student is either employed or proceeding to further studies. Sounds perfect, which is the concerning bit.
Several Right to Information (RTI) applications filed at the off-campus centres, seeking placement information, showed that the number of placements for the Murshidabad centre was “Nil,” with no data recorded on placement drives or salary.
From the 51 students who graduated from the Malappuram campus, the data showed that only one had confirmed placement, and nine names were given to a law firm awaiting final results.
Going by the RTI replies, the two off-campus centres sent out 95 graduates and one graduate with a confirmed placement. If the 95 are subtracted from AMU’s total graduating batch of 218, the Aligarh campus has 123 of its own graduates left.
The declared 182 placements, minus the 10, if all nine forwarded names are also counted as placed, equal 172 placements that Aligarh would need to account for from the batch of 123 graduates.
AMU’s official Annual Report lists 10 placed students, and another internal document containing the names of placed students lists 11. For the exact same batch across all its main and off-campus centres (Mallapuram and Murshidabad), AMU reported 184 placements to the National Institutional Ranking Framework.
It claimed a significantly higher placement count to the NIRF than what its own internal documents showed, the Leaflet report said, which implies potential data manipulation or inflation of numbers just to boost its national ranking.
According to the report, a detailed inspection of the AMU documents uploaded on its website to support its NIRF evidence raises even more questions. From 2022 to 2025, their inflated NIRF placement claims, scrambled student data, and missing salaries repeatedly contradict their own reports.
A few students’ names allegedly appear multiple times in documents relating to law, engineering, or postgraduate courses for the same company and salary. Data entries also mislabel programmes so much that a student cannot be identified by the course to which they belong.
Although it is AMU that is likely manipulating the data, the question arises as to why the Ministry of Education is letting it slide. The Ministry has historically never shown any kind of authority about the accuracy of the data in its ranking — mostly provided by universities themselves.
Even the online feedback system, where third-party users can highlight issues, has been reduced to a suggestion box.
The Leaflet report suggests that the Ministry enforce that universities submit salary records and enrolment-numbered placements before the national ranking is published. It said the ranking system must establish a structured framework of laws, restrictions, and prohibitions for misleading practices — a sanctions regime of consequences.
Invoking Section 4 of the RTI Act, 2005, it called on Aligarh Muslim University to publish the anonymised records supporting the summary of numbers to the public. The Leaflet had also reached out to AMU for a comment but didn’t hear from the university.
