Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan on Thursday stepped in to resolve the standoff between protesting college students and the vice-chancellor (V-C) of Visva-Bharati University. Pradhan is alleged to have suggested the college to arrange an inside committee to ascertain a line of communication with the scholars and to wrap up the admission course of and declare outcomes wherever due.
Pradhan’s intervention got here a day after V-C Bidyut Chakraborty wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, flagging alleged threats from a Trinamool Congress chief, and requested safety.
Modi is the college’s Chancellor.
On Thursday, members of the Visva-Bharati University Faculty Association (VBUFA) additionally wrote to Modi, demanding motion towards the V-C and save the college from “further degeneration”.
A bit of scholars have been staging a sit-in exterior Chakraborty’s residence to demand revocation of the rustication of three college students on prices of “gross indiscipline and misconduct”. The college administration subsequently suspended its admission course of on the bottom that the “physical presence of the V-C is necessary”. It additionally introduced that “publication of results will not be possible till the situation becomes normal”.
The three students were rusticated in August-end for three years for “disrupting academic atmosphere in the university by assembling at Chhatimtala on January 9 and being involved in disorderly conduct in the name of protest”.
The rustication was approved by the university’s executive council. The administration has also suspended two professors for “gross indiscipline and misconduct”, taking the total number of suspended teachers to 20.