JU ruckus: Agitating students to decide on next stage of protests today
Kolkata: The students of Kolkata’s iconic Jadavpur University agitated over the March 1 ruckus in which two students were allegedly hit and injured by a Minister’s car will announce their next course of agitation after 4 p.m. on Wednesday.
The students are adamant about their demands. The first is that an FIR be filed against Minister Bartya Basu in the matter of the two fellow students being “allegedly and deliberately” hit by the Minister’s vehicle. The second demand is that the acting vice-chancellor of the university Bhaskar Gupta should immediately convene a meeting with the different students’ unions and discuss the ongoing crisis in the university.
The contention of the students is also that the Kolkata Police conducted a one-sided and biased investigation on the ruckus within the campus last Saturday, with all the seven FIRs filed in the matter being against the students and not a single one in the matter of two students being injured and hospitalized.
They have also demanded that all the cases filed against the students be dropped immediately and that the university authorities should bear the medical expenses of the students injured in the matter.
The students have fixed a deadline of 4 p.m. on Wednesday for the acting vice-chancellor to send specific communications to them on this issue, failing which they will be announcing their next course of agitation in the matter.
The demand for filing an FIR against Basu was raised at a meeting of the acting vice-chancellor with different college and university teachers’ associations on Tuesday. However, the representatives from the West Bengal College & University Professors’ Association (WBCUPA) strongly objected to that proposal.
The ruckus broke out within the university campus on Saturday when the Minister’s car was allegedly stopped after it entered the campus, and a scuffle followed. The students were demanding immediate elections for the university’s students’ council.
The agitating students alleged that while Basu decided to leave the campus in the face of the protests, his vehicle deliberately hit the two agitating students, following which they were severely injured and had to be hospitalised. Amid the protests, the Minister received minor injuries and fell sick. He was taken to the state-run S.S.K.M. Medical College & Hospital and was discharged later.
