A group of Jawaharlal Nehru University students who have come together as the ‘committee of suspended students’ managed to enforce a strike on the campus on Monday.
Ensuring that classes were cancelled, the protesters rallied behind the nine students suspended on December 27, 2016, for allegedly stalling an Academic Council Meeting of the university in which a UGC notification of May 2016 was “undemocratically” adopted.
On Sunday night, the students had called for a “lockdown” to save the “public funded university”.
This, even as the JNU Students’ Union’s hunger strike regarding the issue entered its seventh day.
‘Illegal activity’
Registrar Pramod Kumar said on Monday that normal functioning of the university was being affected due to divisive student politics.
“Today, a handful of students are illegally and forcibly preventing academic activities in JNU, which is condemnable. Striking students should desist from such illegal activity,” said Mr. Kumar.
Many students, meanwhile, were unhappy with how regular classes were being impacted over an issue the JNU administration needed to iron out.
Branding the students “anarchists”, the ABVP on campus said that regular students and teachers had been heckled.
The JNUSU has now called for a referendum on February 7 on the V-C’s ‘unilateral imposition of UGC’s circular’ to ensure “massive seat cuts in M.Phil/Ph.D and “curtailment of legally mandated reservations”.
According to the students’ body, “they [the government] have reduced funds for higher education and curtailed fellowship for research scholars. Last year, the UGC withdrew non-NET fellowships. Now, they are reducing seats and denying entry for SC/ST/OBC/PH students. The agenda is to kill inclusive education and research in universities.”
