V-C’s conduct against JNU Act, says ‘jury’

JNUTA begins ‘public inquiry’ against Jagadesh Kumar on university campus

Clear picture: The ‘ Jan Sunwai ’ in progress at JNU campus in the Capital on Monday.

The Jawaharlal Nehru University Teachers’ Association (JNUTA) on Monday held its first session of the five-part “public inquiry” it is holding against Vice-Chancellor M. Jagadesh Kumar on the university campus. The ‘jury’ found Mr. Kumar’s conduct against the JNU Act, 1966 which is an Act of the Indian Parliament through which JNU was created.

The JNUTA presented the first of the seven charges from the “chargesheet” it had submitted to the V-C as a memorandum charging him with violations of statutory provisions and harassing teachers and students among other charges.

Representatives from the JNUTA, Ravi Srivastava and Jayati Ghosh, presented the first charge pertaining to “repeated violations of statutory provisions and obligations” in framing the university’s admission policy, appointing experts on selection committee panels, undemocratic conduct of academic committee meetings and replacing the Gender Sensitisation Committee Against Sexual Harassment (GSCASH) with the Internal Complaints Committee amongst others.

The teachers gave examples from the functioning of the university over the past 18 months to a ‘jury’ that comprised Nandita Narain and Apoorvanand, both professors from the Delhi University; Prabhat Patnaik and P.K. Yadav, former JNU professors; and journalist and author Akshay Mukul.

V-C was absent

Since the V-C did not participate in the “public inquiry”, a defence was prepared from the various statements he had issued relating to the issues in question and was read out to the ‘jury’.

At the end of the session, Prof. Apoorvanand suggested that an inquiry be conducted against him by the visitor of the university, the President of India and concurred with views of Prof. Narain and Prof. Patnaik that the V-C’s conduct was against not just the JNU Act but other Acts of Parliament pertaining to reservation.

JNUTA president Ayesha Kidwai said that a ‘self study’ report, that was presented by the JNU administration to the visiting National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC) team between October 9 and 11, presents a stunning picture of a model university, academically and culturally vibrant, healthy university space where social and gender justice in education is cherished as an essential feature of academic excellence, and one in which all decisions are taken through a consultative, democratic process however, in reality, things were quite different.

“In fact, the lies in the NAAC report that the JNU VC has certified as “true to the best of his knowledge” are made possible only because the report only covers the JNU of 2012 to 2016. In other words, the JNU Vice-Chancellor has hidden his own misdeeds by editing the first full academic year of his reign out,” said Ms. Kidwai.

The JNUTA said that it was conducting this “public inquiry” since JNU is a public institution, funded by the taxes that the people of India pay, which must be run in accordance with the framework laid down by the JNU Act.