JU: VC says ready for discussion with protesting students

Abhijit Chakraborty, who has been made the full time VC,  told IBNS that the incident of last Sept 16 - a crackdown on the protesting students by police- was 'really very unfortunate' and he did not want the repetition of such an incident in future.

On Sept 16,  Chakraborty had called the police to remove protesting students of the university from the main administrative building in the JU campus. The police had cracked down on agitating protesters and arrested several students that night.

Abhijit Chakraborty also said that he has ordered the dean of Jadavpur University to send notice via email to all heads of the departments and professors to take classes from Oct 13.

But the protester students said they would continue their protest and class boycotts and after puja vacation they would organize a meeting to prepare the outline of the next step of their movement.

Member of Jadavpur University Teacher Association (JUTA), Dr. Nandini Mukherjee said, "Till now, I did not get any email from the university. We, professors don't have any problem to take classes. But if no student attend the classes then what can we do?"

At least 35 students of the prestigious Jadavpur University (JU) were arrested at around 2 am on Sept 16 night for staging protests in front of the main administrative building within the campus and the vice chancellor, whom they labelled as a Trinamool Congress man.

Students alleged that their members were dragged, manhandled and girls molested by the police officers and those who cracked down on them. They claimed activists from the Trinamool Chhatra Parishad (TMCP), the student's arm of West Bengal’s ruling Trinamool Congress, also came in with the police.

The JU students had staged a sit-in demonstration at the main administrative building of the university last month demanding an unbiased probe- with neutral panel sans ruling party members- into the alleged molestation of a second-year student by students from the university some time back.

Since then a student stir continued which also went viral in social networking site like Facebook as Hok Kolorob meaning Let There Be Noise.

(Reporting by Deepayan Sinha)