Condemning the police lathi-charge on Chandigarh’s Panjab University (PU) students, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) on Wednesday demanded to withdraw sedition cases on the students. AT the same time, the party blamed the varsity Vice-Chancellor (VC) for the trouble.
AAP’s Punjab convener Gurpreet Singh Ghuggi, strongly condemning the police lathi charge on the agitating students, made the demand to withdraw the sedition cases filed against them.
Ghuggi squarely blamed the university authorities for not hearing the grievances of the students who demanded to withdraw steep hike in the fees. “VC Arun Kumar Grover has failed to address the issue and didn’t take the student bodies into confidence before taking decision on fee hike,” he said.
“Police had no role to interfere in the academic matters and the VC is fully responsible for allowing the situation to go out of hand,” said Ghuggi adding that the student organizations had given enough opportunity to the university authorities to open negotiations. He said that it was unfortunate that student agitation had turned violent. He also sympathized with the police personnel hurt while dealing with the students.
AAP’s Punjab convener demanded probe into the violence by an independent agency while alleging that students were provoked under a deep-rooted conspiracy. Police action was aimed to flare up the student agitation and no efforts were made to settle the issue amicably, he alleged, adding that certain vested interests were behind the violence.
He also appealed to students to use restrain and launch peaceful agitation.
Ghuggi said that Central Government had pushed Panjab University into financial mess and UGC had not released the grants to run the affairs of university.
He also accused Punjab government for ignoring the demands of Panjab University for higher grants since Punjab Government has its stake in the university.