In an audacious show of wild belligerence, the students of Kolkata’s premier Jadavpur University have kept the Vice Chancellor, Pro-Vice Chancellor and Registrar confined to their rooms for the past more than 28 hours demanding immediate lifting of the punishment to two final year engineering students found guilty of ragging a junior colleague.
And with the top officials refusing to oblige the students who started the gherao from around 4.30 pm on Wednesday stepped up their movement by calling for a general class boycott on Thursday. It was an utter violation of Supreme Court ruling and UGC directive.
Even Pro-VC A Dutta said there was no question of lifting the punishment and asked the students to take the “only recourse left with them was petitioning the honourable Governor who is also the Chancellor of the university.”
The university had expelled one of the two 4th Year students for one year and suspended the second one for six months for ragging a second year mate “as per the UGC guidelines” and refused to withdraw its verdict. The expelled student would have to take a readmission.
The decision was taken by the anti-ragging committee set up by VC Souvik Bhattacharya after finding the students guilty of ragging the junior student.
The agitating students who belonged to two students’ associations AAFSU and DSF “though are not in favour of ragging want the university to reconsider its decisions as it is concerned with the career of the punished students.”
“There is no question of any dilution of the university’s stand. We have seen similar agitations earlier also and are confident of handling it,” Registrar Pradip Ghosh said informing the students were sitting at the porch of the main administrative block and were not allowing the staff to go out.
Thus blockaded the officers who had till late in the evening had not requisitioned police help had to get medicines from their homes sources said.
The Supreme Court as well as the UGC had earlier asked the universities to show zero-tolerance for ragging.