Even as Jawaharlal Nehru University research scholar Anirban Bhattacharya, for whom the campus will remain out of bounds for five years — starting July 25 — found the punishment “illogical”, the administration said the decision was also based on his past record.
Mr. Bhattacharya, who is pursuing PhD from the School of Social Sciences, has been rusticated till July 15.
Mr. Bhattacharya, along with Umar Khalid and JNU Students’ Union president Kanhaiya Kumar, was arrested in connection with an event marking the death anniversary of Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru. They were charged with sedition and sent to judicial custody.
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The PhD scholar, who has been given a window of 10 days to submit his PhD, said he would have submitted it by then anyway since his registration ends on July 25.
“I would have submitted my PhD by July 25 anyway as my registration ends that day, but the logic of making the campus out of bounds for me is a cruel joke. How can the administration not allow me to enter the campus where I have spent close to 10 years,” he asked.
However, the administration defended the punishment saying it was not based only on the February 9 events alone. “We have taken into account his past record and then decided to ban his entry on campus. As a matter of fact, what will he even do on campus after completing his PhD? There will be no other course left for him to pursue,” said a senior University official.
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As per JNU records, Mr. Bhattacharya had organised a talk on Afzal Guru on the premises of Tapti hostel on February 11, 2015, despite cancellation of permission. After the event, the then Chief Proctor Krishan Kumar had imposed a fine of Rs.5,000 on him and ordered him to change his hostel.
Responding to the charge, the 28-year-old said: “Disciplinary actions are part of a student’s life at JNU. One cannot be debarred from the campus for such a long time on the basis of that.”
“All this is nothing but obeying of orders from the Centre. Right from the constitution of the high-level enquiry committee to the orders given by it, everything is a farce. There is no logic in this at all. We were not even given a chance to explain ourselves,” he said.
As per JNU, he had organised a talk on Afzal Guru in 2015 despite cancellation of permission