In a first of its kind, JNU students are embarking on a mass RTI filing campaign on Thursday, seeking information from the administration on admissions and appointments that have taken place this year.
Students claim that the merit list has not yet been released by the University in the new academic year, "All the previous years, the lists have been displayed for everyone's scrutiny, but just this year there has been absolutely no transparency. The admission process has been very hasty and unfair to many students and the appointments that have been made also reveal the presence of nepotism and corruption in the management," said Mohit K Pandey, President, JNUSU.
Every year, the University released a list of the students who have been admitted, however this time around, the students who have been selected have been sent a message confirming the same. "Those who have not got selected have no way of knowing that they haven't," said Amal P Pullarkkat, Vice President, JNUSU.
Even the faculty appointments are being conducted according to the VC's personal wishes, the student body alleged. "People belonging to the RSS are being preferred over well-qualified applicants. The Linguistics department recently hired a person only with a Masters degree and has passed the NET exam. No other qualifications. For the very same post, another applicant who had a PhD with a lot of publications in international journals was turned down," Pullarkkat said.
"Since our repeated demands for fair admission processes have gone unheard, We have decided the best way to do it is to file an RTI to find out how the admissions are being conducted. So far only 53 percent of the seats have been filled and out of the 74 intakes only three SC, 2 ST and 13 OBC students were given admission, we have to know why?" Mohit explained.
Pandey said that the whole student population would participate in filing the RTIs, "We'll install stalls outside every school in the university and those who would like to file can go ahead and do so," he explained.
But do they really think that sending out mass RTI's will yield faster results? "We are sure we won't get the results but we have to take a stand against this and so we decided this is the best way to get attention," Pullarkkat said.
