JNU protest fallout: Suspension notice served on three students
Aditi Tandon
Tribune News Service
New Delhi, December 18
The ongoing protest by the students against the hike in hostel fee by Jawarahlal Nehru University (JNU) has witnessed the first major fallout with three students being placed under academic suspension and barred from entering the campus.
The students– Gautam Sharma, Manikant Patel and Shashi Tripathi – have received notices for academic suspension from the JNU chief proctor who said that the three would have to vacate their hostels and stay clear of the campus pending the outcome of the inquiry they face. The notice does not prescribe time limits for the completion of such inquiry.
The students – two pursuing MPhil and one MA – are contemplating legal options against the orders and said they were being targeted for “raising their voice against the JNU administration.”
JNU protests against hostel service and utility charges and also against the hike in room rent have been underway for over sixty days now.
The academic suspension notices mention that the JNU administration has prima facie evidence to suggest that the students in question surrounded the V-C and other officials during the ongoing protests and abused and heckled them in the presence of the security guards of the university and Delhi Police personnel.
“The official vehicle of the VC was hit with a sharp object breaking the front and the rear glasses. Thereafter, you entered the administrative building using abusive language and banged the doors of the officials. You broke open the door of the V-C’s office, vandalised and ransacked it,” the notice to Gautam Sharma says.
Finding the students guilty of indiscipline, the JNU administration has said in the suspension notice, “The competent authority of the university has ordered that you be kept under academic suspension, evicted from the hostel and the entire JNU campus be declared out of bounds for you pending the outcome of the proctorial inquiry. Anyone found giving shelter to you in any hostel on campus shall invite disciplinary action.”
Gautam Sharma, when contacted, said he was not part of the sequence of events mentioned in the notice for suspension which is dated December 16. “I had to approach the Delhi High Court to secure admission to the MPhil course at JNU and it was because of me that JNU began implementing the reservation for OBCs in MPhil admissions. I am seeking legal opinion against this academic suspension which is effectively a rustication order, the first since Kanhaiya Kumar and others were rusticated by JNU over sedition charges,” Gautam Sharma said.
Manikant Patel added that he had been ordered to vacate the hostel by December 23.
“This is unfair. We have been presumed guilty, without even being heard. The notice mentions evidence against us and does not give us a chance to defend ourselves. We will fight this politically and legally,” Patel said.
The Chief Proctor’s notices, however, clarify that the action against the students would be applicable pending the outcome of the inquiry against them.
