A blue chart paper stuck on the wall of the main administrative building, Arabinda Bhawan, says it all: “Our demonstration is peaceful, trample us to go inside (the building).” About a hundred students of the Jadavpur University (JU) have been sitting under the poster for the last 72 hours. Their demand, painted in red, is on every wall: the interim Vice-Chancellor (V-C), “Abhijit Chakravarty must go.” Professor Chakravarty has gone on leave and decision to appoint him as the full-time VC is pending with the Governor, the Chancellor of the University.
While teachers and students in the campus are divided along political ideologies, everyone argued that Professor Chakravarti made the “mistake of his life” by calling the police in the campus of the university in the early hours of Thursday. The V-C called the police after being encircled by the students for about 10 hours.
The students and the teachers boycotted all academic activities on Friday and refused to allow the senior administrators like the VC, pro-VC or the Registrar inside the administrative building till evening. After several rounds of back-channel negotiations the students finally allowed the pro-VC, Siddhartha Dutta and the Registrar Pradeep Ghosh to enter the building.
But many students said that “allowing some of the officials” to enter will not take the steam out of the movement, as other universities in Kolkata and across the country are supporting them. Meanwhile, the Chancellor of the University, Governor Keshari Nath Tripathi summoned the Police Commissioner for an update on police action inside the campus. The Commissioner said yesterday that the police exercised “extreme restraint.
Many faculty members told The Hindu that the VC completely misread the situation on more than one occasion.
“It would be wrong to say that the V-C’s decision to call the police is the only issue that triggered this unrest,” said a professor of Production Engineering on condition of anonymity.
