Kolkata, July 6 (IANS) The students’ siege of Jadavpur University Vice-Chancellor Suranjan Das and other executive council members that began on Wednesday afternoon ended close to Thursday-Friday midnight, as the protesters allowed him to go home.
However, the students gave him a deadline of 5 pm on Friday to roll back the Executive Council’s July 4 decision scrapping admission tests for undergraduate courses in six humanities subjects.
“We have allowed him to go. We have given them (the university authorities) time till Friday, 3 pm, to roll back the July 4 decision and implement the EC’s June 27 decision to prepare the merit list for admission based on equal weightage to admission test and marks obtained in the previous board examination,” said a protesting student Debraj Koley .
He said the students would come up with some novel forms of protest if the authorities did not yield to their demand.
Das, who spend 31 hours confined to his chamber, earlier expressed dismay over the protests, calling them A”inhuman”, but categorically said he would not call the police.
“I have a number of ailments, but they are not allowing me to follow the protocols suggested by my doctors. My health is getting affected. In the name of launching a democratic moment they are infringing on our right to spend a normal life with our family.
“The decision has been taken by the majority of executive council members. I am bound to abide by that as per university rules. What could I have done?
“But I will never call the police. I will hope good sense prevails,” he told mediapersons at his room.
Meanwhile,a section of Athe teachers of the English department have decided to stay away from the entire admission process, protesting against the “insult” and acehumiliation” meted out to them by the authorities.
The Jadavpur University Teachers’ Association has also decided to hold a ceasework on Friday.
In a volte face, apparently under pressure from the West Bengal government, JU authorities on Wednesday decided to do away with the decades-old system of holding entrance tests for admission to six under-graduate courses, triggering protests from students and current and former teachers.
A week earlier, the university executive council had declared that admission tests would be held for six departments of the humanities stream – comparative literature, history, political science, philosophy, English and Bengali.
But it had also decided that for preparing the merit list, equal weightage would be given to marks and the test.
However, on Wednesday, the EC in a resolution withdrew the notification issued earlier for admission tests and said “under-graduate admission in arts should be conducted on the basis of marks obtained in the last board examination alone, without conducting any written admission test”.
The EC, however, said the decision has been taken for the coming academic year only “in order to address the impasse created by legal questions regarding the process, and not to inconvenience the thousands of applicants awaiting certainty regarding the admission process.”.
Earlier, the university witnessed an uproar following the decision to take the services of “external experts” in preparing one ofA the two sets of question papers for the admission tests, and the opinion of the advocate general that the Board of Studies has no role to play in the admission process.
The latest EC decision came in the backdrop of state education minister Partha Chatterjee on more than one occasion speaking out against the JU holding admission tests for undergraduate courses in some subjects, while admitting students on the basis of plus two results in some other courses.
Soon after the EC meeting, a large number of slogan-shttuing students began an impromptu sit-in demonstration in front of Aurobindo Bhavan, the university’s administrative headquarters, and confined the vice chancellor to his room.
–IANS
ssp/ahm/
