JNUTU holds protest, demands registrar’s ouster
09 March, New Delhi
Demanding ouster of Jawaharlal Nehru University’s registrar Prof Bhupinder Zutshi, the varsity Teachers’ Association (JNUTU) Wednesday staged a protest, alleging that he was deliberately leaking information to media to frame the six accused students and spreading lies to defame the university.
As the protest of teachers was backed by JNU students union, its president Kanhaiya Kumar also came out in their support and expressed gratitude to varsity’ faculty, saying without their help, the movement to ‘save JNU’ wouldn’t have been a success.
Before getting on with protest, JNUTU adopted two motions unanimously in an open assembly of students and professors outside the admin block in the controversy hit campus.
The first resolution was moved by Dr Jaiveer Singh, voicing disappointment against the high level committee, which was formed by VC Jagdeesh Kumar to probe into the alleged commemorative event for Parliament Attack convict Afzal Guru, held on February 9 inside the campus.
”The terms of reference of the high level committee were not laid down when it was constituted and till now there are none. Twice its deadline has been extended. We don’t have any hope of justice from it,” he said.
The second motion was moved by Prof Ranjini Majumdar, demanding de-recognition of registrar’s office, saying Jutshi was not discharging his duties honestly and spreading lies to defame the university.”He should also be removed from Nodal Officer of the University He is feeding wrong information to Ministry of Human Resource Development and the Parliament,” she said.
Prof Ajay Patnaik, President, JNUTU, held that the registrar was leaking reports to media before tabling them before the high level probe committee to frame accused students and that he was bringing bad name to his office.
Kumar alleged that some people were running a smear campaign against the university with two objectives — to delegitimise the student movement and to assassinate the moral character of the varsity.
Linking the entire JNU controversy with upcoming UP assembly elections, he said ‘JNU to Bahana Hai, UP Chunav Nishana Hai’ and added that ‘more attacks will follow in future against us.’