Two days after a group of Panjab University (PU) students disrupted Haryana legislative assembly speaker Gian Chand Gupta’s address during a seminar on campus, a panel constituted by vice-chancellor professor Raj Kumar recommended that the students should be counselled.
The committee held a meeting on Wednesday to deliberate on the issue.
A member of the committee, seeking anonymity, said, “Considering the present situation in the country, especially in the universities, it was suggested that the students, who interrupted the address should be counselled by the dean students welfare (DSW) or the chairpersons of their respective departments to avoid such incidents in the future.”
On Monday, after masked miscreants attacked students and teachers at New Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), a group of Panjab University (PU) students raised slogans against vice-chancellor Raj Kumar, BJP and Akhil Bharatiya Vishwa Parishad (ABVP) carrying placards when speaker Gian Chand Gupta was talking about the ‘Beti Bachao, Beti padhao’ initiative of the BJP government during a seminar on ‘Women’s participation in decision making”.
The protesting students were soon escorted out of the seminar hall by security guards but the seminar had to be halted for about 10 minutes.
{{/usCountry}}The protesting students were soon escorted out of the seminar hall by security guards but the seminar had to be halted for about 10 minutes.
{{/usCountry}}The students alleged that the speaker had not said a single thing about the violence against female students at JNU.
Gupta later sharply criticised the students who interrupted him. However, Panjab University Campus Student Council (PUCSC) president Chetan Chaudhary said, “There is no need to counsel the students because students can protest anywhere. It is their right to protest until they do it without causing harm to anyone.”
Students For Society (SFS) students, who protested during the seminar, said that they strongly condemned the undemocratic attitude of PU authorities to curb freedom of speech on the campus. Authorities have been the playing second fiddle to the BJP-RSS-ABVP agenda of saffornising our campus which cannot be tolerated, they said.
We will not to allow PU authorities to turn PU into RSS laboratory to spread false and communal agenda, they said.