Activists of the State unit of the Students Federation of India (SFI) on Wednesday filed an FIR against Internet search engine giant Yahoo for “wrongly using” a photograph that showed students of the Himachal Pradesh University (HPU) along with a news report about Jadavpur University students shouting pro-Afzal Guru slogans.
The SFI alleged that a report titled ‘Now Jadavpur University students raise pro-Afzal and azadi slogans’ that appeared in the company website was accompanied by a picture depicting students at the Shimla campus.
“The SFI here had never raised such slogans in favour of Afzal Guru or anyone else in the campus”, Noval Thakur, HPU SFI president, said, adding that an FIR was filed with the Himachal police who had earlier asked the activists to file a civil defamation suit.
The SFI has been the dominant students’ organisation in HPU since its inception in 1971. The student body had won majority of the elections in coalition with the All India Students Federation (AISF) till the 1980s and registered victories contesting on its own since.
However, the outfit faced competition for the first time in 1983 from the ABVP when the incumbent Union Health Minister J.P. Nadda shared the presidential post along with an SFI candidate when both secured equal number of votes.
Both the BJP and the Congress governments in power in the State had banned direct student elections in the university fearing violence.
