Pay fine, get registered: HC

Court reiterates single judge order asking four JNU students to pay penalty

Heavy price: JNU imposed a fine on the four students for allegedly “barging” into an Academic Council meeting.

The Delhi High Court on Wednesday reiterated its single judge’s order asking four Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) students to pay the fine imposed on them by the university if they wished to get registered for the next semester of their PhD course.

JNU had imposed a fine on Mulayam Singh, Shakeel Anjum, Dileep Kumar and Prashant Kumar for allegedly “barging” into an Academic Council meeting on admission criteria for MPhil and PhD programmes.

Friday deadline

Allowing the students to deposit the fines by Friday, a Bench of Justices Vipin Sanghi and Rekha Palli said if the fine is paid, no other hindrances will be created in the registration process. However, if the fine is not paid, the students will have to vacate their respective hostels, it added, listing the students’ appeal against the single-judge order for hearing on July 31.

A single judge Bench had on July 20 told the students to deposit the fine and go ahead with registration for the next semester. The order had come on a plea by the students challenging the JNU Chief Proctor’s July 13 order slapping a fine of ₹10,000 on each of them. Besides the fine, the Chief Proctor’s order barred their registration for the next semester, their scholarships and library facilities were stopped and they were asked to vacate their respective hostels.

Poor families

The students, represented by senior advocate Colin Gonsalves, have challenged the JNU order on the grounds that they do not have the means to pay the fine as they belong to poor families.

In their plea, filed through advocate Gunjan Singh, they also claimed that the order disallowing registration was “unprecedented and contrary to the practice” as students who did not pay the fine imposed on them have always, in the past, been allowed to register, subject to payment on leaving the institute.

All four students, who are in the third and fourth years of their respective PhD programmes, have contended that they were not provided the documents and materials based on which the final report of the Proctor was arrived at on June 19. The report had charged them with forcible entry into the meeting and raising slogans, thereby disrupting the proceedings, their pleas said.

Their petitions also claimed that their appeal against the report was dismissed by the Vice-Chancellor on July 5, following which the Chief Proctor passed the July 13 order.

According to JNU’s preliminary report of December last year, a group of students was protesting outside the room where the Academic Council meeting was underway. They allegedly “broke open the latch of the meeting room door”, and came inside and “shouted at” the V-C.