Students and teachers of Jawaharlal Nehru University protested at the Ministry of Human Resource Development to demand the resignation of JNU Vice-Chancellor M Jagadesh Kumar in the aftermath of the attack by masked persons inside the campus on January 5 that left 36 people injured and infrastructure damaged.
Sudipto, a PhD student in JNU, told InUth,
“One of the demands is the resignation of JNU VC as well as the Proctor, Director and the people who are in that group. The other demand, obviously, is the rollback of the fee hike which has been one-sided imposed on us. All the false cases that have charged on Students’ Union activists and other activists who have been active in the now two-and-a-half month-long agitation be taken back. ”
Sanskriti, a PhD student in JNU, added,
“The immediate context of this is the violence that has happened. The larger context is the fee hike movement which has been going on for around 74 days now in JNU. The University campus is under a shutdown because the students are asking that the inter-hostel administration manual — the revised draft manual which will govern our hostel rules — was passed in an illegal and undemocratic manner and led to a substantial fee hike, making JNU one of the most expensive public universities in the country and we’re opposing that.”
Kaushal, a former student of JNU, added,
“The Vice-Chancellor is himself a big grievance to this campus. He was there before I joined JNU. Since then, I have seen that he has never spoken to the Union. The Union is elected by the students. There is a constitution of JNU which we all follow. He never abides by anything but gets dictated by (Rashtriya Swayamsevak) Sangh. He is not even listening to MHRD. The MHRD asked him to go with certain guidelines but he did not follow them.”
The students were detained and later released.
