Hundreds of students, alumni and teachers of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) joined a protest march from Mandi House to Parliament House on Tuesday.
The protest, called by the JNU Teachers’ Association (JNUTA), was against the “undemocratic decision-making” by Vice-Chancellor M. Jagadesh Kumar in implementing of the University Grants Commission (UGC) May 2016 Gazette Notification.
Allegations
Alleging that its implementation will lead to seat cuts, the JNUTA claimed Prof. Kumar has bypassed all decision-making bodies of the university.
Political leaders including Ali Anwar Ansari of the Janata Dal (United), Digvijaya Singh of the Congress, D. Raja of the Communist Party of India and A. Sampath of the CPI (Marxist) joined the march. They promised that if the matter was not sorted out by the next Parliament session, they would raise it in the House.
Unconstitutional move
JNUTA president Ayesha Kidwai said a march to Parliament was organised last February as JNU was being attacked by external forces.
However, she added, the attack this time was from inside the campus by its V-C, who was trying to “shut down JNU” by adopting the UGC May 2016 Gazette Notification, which would lead to seat cuts in M.Phil and PhD admissions.
Prof. Kidwai added that the V-C was going against the JNU Act and that it was an unconstitutional move. As per the Act, she said, the Academic Council of the university is the body that takes all decisions regarding academic life and that the 142nd AC meeting, during which the UGC May 2016 Gazette Notification came up for discussion, was not held as per procedure.
Earlier in the day, before the students left the campus for the protest march, the administration appealed to the JNU community to stop the agitating students, who have been occupying the administrative block since February 9.
V-C’s appeal
In his appeal, the V-C said: “It is time for the university community to come forward and save the institution from detractors and agitators who appear hell-bent on making JNU dysfunctional.”
He added that hundreds of staff members and officers were being kept away from their jobs due to the blockade, which will lead to a huge backlog.
‘Arbitrary decisions’
The JNU Students’ Union said the V-C was announcing arbitrary decisions and fundamental changes in JNU’s admission policy and research programmes through press conferences, but refusing to discuss these in JNU’s decision-making bodies like AC, or meet the student and teacher representatives.
JNUSU statement
“Instead, the administration is threatening the students with police action. This, when the students are worried about their future and JNU’s research quality, and are only seeking answers,” the students added
“The V-C claims that the UGC notification suggesting an ideal ‘student-supervisor ratio’ is ‘binding’ on JNU. So admissions will be offered only if and when a supervisor is guiding less than the specified number of students. If the V-C’s system is followed, it not only mean closure of the annual entrance exams and admissions, but also leads to an absurd situation where students will no longer be allotted supervisors based on their topic and the supervisor’s field of expertise, but based arbitrarily on which supervisor happens to be guiding fewer students than the number ‘specified’ by the UGC circular,” the students said in their statement.
Future admissions
They added that not only future admissions, even existing students who are already admitted in MPhil/PhD programmes will impacted.
