By Bizodisha Bureau, Cuttack, August 8, 2015 : President Pranab Mukherjee on Saturday called upon law graduates to fight injustice, uphold the rule of law in society and lend their voice to voiceless and powerless people.

The President’s speech was read out by the National Law University Chancellor and Orissa High Court Chief Justice D H Waghela at the second convocation function held here.

Mukherjee had cut short his two-day Odisha visit midway on Friday night and left for New Delhi as his wife Suvra and was hospitalised.

Hailing the Constitution as the most inspiring and noble, the president called upon the law students to study it and understand Indian political systems and processes properly.

“The Constitution of India must be at the back of your mind, its spirit at the bottom of your heart,” he said adding it stood as a “powerful guarantor of justice, liberty and equality”.

Recalling Utkal Gourab Madhusudan Das, the first barrister of Odisha, the president said, Late Das became the role model for the subsequent generation of lawyers and law students. “He [Das] always placed ethics before anything else in his legal practice”, Mukherjee added.

Congratulating students having completed formal education, the President said, “Committed and idealistic people can bring about tangible change in society. You have to join the brigade of such change agents”.

Mukerjee also exhorted students and practitioners of law to engage themselves in moral reasoning and debate about the true ramification of social evils. “Law educational institutions must not only develop proficiency in their students in the traditionally identified skills of legal reasoning, research and writing . They must also encourage their students to deliberate on noble ideas like equality, liberty, fraternity and social justice”, he remarked.

Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik, Justices Dipak Misra, V Gopal Gowda and Amitava Roy of Supreme Court were part of the Convocation procession along with University Chancellor Justice Waghela, Vice-chancellor Srikrishna Deva Rao and Registrar Dolly Jabbal.

A law journal of the university ‘Access to Justice’ was released at the function and a single scholar Rangin Ballav Tripathy was awarded the PhD degree, while 42 students got LLM degrees and 109 got LLB degrees. Out of the total 16 gold medals, seven have been instituted by NLUO, the rest 9 have been donated by various dignitaries of the legal fraternity.