Ahead of the 143rd Academic Council (AC) meeting scheduled to be held on Tuesday, the Jawaharlal Nehru University Students’ Union (JNUSU) said the Vice-Chancellor had claimed “emergency” powers to push an anti-student and undemocratic agenda”.
JNUSU president Mohit Pandey said, “In the AC meeting’s agenda, the most prominent word is emergency powers. We have written to the V-C as well as teachers to appeal to them to resist any undemocratic move to the admission policy in the name of emergency powers.”
‘Unwarranted’
The union added, “The fact the V-C’s emergency powers were exercised and invoked to give effect to the M.Phil/Ph.D admission policy announced on March 21 was completely unwarranted. This, when the demand of the entire teaching and student community in JNU was to reconvene the full AC meeting. It’s improper on the part of the V-C to arrogate the powers of the AC, by him being its chairperson, on deciding such critical matters as the university’s admission policy.”
Appealing for deliberation in the interest of academic vibrancy, the JNUSU said the meeting shouldn’t be a repeat of the 142nd (A) meeting of the AC held on December 23, 2016, which was “a most brazen display of authoritarianism on part of the administration to push its own agenda of implementing the UGC 2016 Gazette Notification that brought changes in the admission policy”.
Both the JNU Teachers’ Association (JNUTA) and JNUSU have brought to the notice of the administration that Tuesday’s AC meeting was happening in the backdrop of an order by the Division Bench of the Delhi High Court maintaining a stay on a judgment by a single judge Bench of Justice V. Kameshwar Rao in the matter of Shubhanshu Singh & Ors versus JNU.
The JNUTA and JNUSU said, “As a result, the admission policy arbitrarily announced by JNU on its website on March 21, 2017, that effected massive seat cuts and fundamental changes in admission policy for M.Phil/Ph.D, has in effect been stayed.”
Seat cuts
The students said: “This means that JNU can’t carry on with its agenda of implementing seat cuts via its intake announced through e-prospectus for 2017-18 Admissions.”
