The Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) on Monday claimed that security guards roughed up students while they were demanding answers from the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) administration regarding the delay in the release of their fellowship.
However, the university said that students had barged into the Students’ & Project Section of the university, confining the staffers to their seats. They had barred the entry and exit of anybody in the section, it said.
“These students were repeatedly requested to come for a dialogue and not to confine the staffers. As the situation was getting serious, the university authority was left with no other option but to ask the unarmed security staff, not the police, to get the staffers released in order to avoid further escalation of conflict,” the university said.
‘Students attacked guards’
It added that the moment these unarmed security guards tried to enter the section, the students started attacking them with chairs and smashing the glass panes of the section.
“The university administration has been ignoring the demands of fellowship and scholarship for a long time. Some students have not received their fellowship for more than a year. Today, students ‘gheraoed’ the administration office regarding the issue of fellowship but were instead attacked by security guards,” the ABVP said.
JNUSU condemns violence
The JNU students’ union said that despite several protests and submission of memorandum by it, the administration had failed to deliver its responsibilities. However, it condemned the violence on campus and blamed the ABVP for the chaos. “The ABVP, time and again, have used violence as a tool to rather create a ruckus within the campus spaces rather than to adhere to democratic deliberations on the issues,” the JNUSU said.
JNU said that it has taken serious cognisance of the above incident. “The university administration is looking into this unfortunate incident and assures the JNU community that strict action will be taken against those who are found guilty of disrupting academic environment of the campus as per university rules,” the administration said,
