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Visva Bharati moves Calcutta high court amid students’ stir against expulsion
The three students, who were suspended in January last year, took part in agitations against several actions taken by Chakrabarty and visits by Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders such as Rajya Sabha member Swapan Dasgupta in 2020 and Union home minister Amit Shah before the March-April assembly polls.
Bengal’s Visva Bharati varsity authorities on Wednesday filed a petition at the Calcutta high court seeking its intervention to clear the impasse created by an agitation against expulsion of three students on disciplinary grounds.
The petition may be heard later this week. The Prime Minister is the chancellor of the university.
Visva Bharati did not make any official statement. Lawyers aware of the development said the state’s only central university -- which was set up by Rabindranath Tagore at Bolpur in Birbhum district in 1921 --- said in its petition that security on campus has been breached by the student agitation that started on August 28. Since then, vice-chancellor Bidyut Chakrabarty has been confined to his on-campus residence. Members of the Students Federation of India (SFI), the students’ wing of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), or CPI(M), have blocked the gates.
The agitators have been sending food items and vegetables for the VC and his family for four days but he refused to accept these. After Chakraborty lodged a police complaint on August 30, four constables and a sub-inspector were deployed outside his home. On Wednesday, the VC ordered food from an online store.
“The VC made a false accusation before some staff members that we are not allowing him to buy food. We have been supplying food thrice a day so that he does not face any inconvenience,” said Rupa Chakraborty, one of the agitating students.
Aishe Ghosh, the student union president at Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University led the agitation on Tuesday. The students’ wing of the ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC) will start a parallel movement on Thursday.
The three students, who were suspended in January last year, took part in agitations against several actions taken by Chakrabarty and visits by Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders such as Rajya Sabha member Swapan Dasgupta in 2020 and Union home minister Amit Shah before the March-April assembly polls.
Demanding Chakrabarty’s removal, Aishe Ghosh said, “He is acting on behalf of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) that wants to establish control over several universities. They tried the same at JNU.”
The BJP state leadership on Wednesday reacted to anti-RSS posters put up on the campus.
“How can the RSS, which has nothing to do with Visva Bharati, be dragged into this? The VC cannot be harassed in this manner because he expressed his independent opinions,” said Bengal BJP’s chief spokesperson Samik Bhattacharya.
In January last year, there was a student unrest when Swapan Dasgupta was invited by the authorities to speak on the Citizenship Amendment Act at a seminar.
A month after this incident, Chakrabarty triggered a controversy when he said those who gather at Delhi’s Rajghat donning white caps on Gandhi Jayanti are “the country’s biggest thieves”.
A section of faculty and staff members are also unhappy with the VC as disciplinary action and suspension orders have been passed against many of them over the past two years.
