The Indian Institute of Mass Communication issued suspension and show-cause notices to eleven of its students, for 'violating the code of conduct' and are asked to show cause by February 13, to avoid further disciplinary action — students allege that this was because they held a public programme that discussed the quality of affordable education in India. However, the students say that they will not apologise or explain themselves in front of the administration. "In spite of repeated persuasion, the students did not mend their ways and continued to violate the Code of Conduct of the students," reads the notice, issued by IIMC's Assistant Registrar Anima Ekka. "Consequently, the IIMC administration is forced to keep these students under suspension forthwith for a period of 5 days with immediate effect," it reads.
The students are belligerent about the suspension. "Whatever happened to us was unjust and we will not apologise to the administration," says Hrishikesh Sharma, one of the suspended students. "We were merely conducting a talk on affordable education, as a prelude to the institute's alumni reunion," he says. He alleges that during the talk, Anand Pradhan, an IIMC faculty had entered the venue and snatched the brochures and flyers. However, when we contacted him, Pradhan rubbished it as a malicious rumour, "This is a fabricated story. Such an incident did not happen."
The institute's administration, however, says that the students were sent the notice, for holding the talk on the premises on February 9, instead of the day that they had allotted for the talk. "We had allotted the premises to conduct the alumni meet on that particular day and had asked the students to conduct the talk on another day. However, they decided to ignore our notification and conducted the talk on the same day," says K Satish Nambudiripad, Additional Director General, IIMC. "The institute has no problem with the topic of discussion. It would have been completely fine had they conducted it on another day," he says.
IIMC students had been on strike recently in relation to the fee hike. Nambudiripad adds that the administration had already resolved the students' problem with the institute's fee structure.
