A few weeks after the tragic death of General Bipin Rawat, the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad's Jawaharlal Nehru University unit has asked the university to rename the varsity's Special Centre for National Security Studies (SCNSS) after him. The unit's President Shivam Chaurasia and Secretary Rohit Kumar have written a letter to Vice-Chancellor Mamidala Jagadesh Kumar and Members of the Executive Council seeking the same.
"General Rawat was celebrated as an army man with a keen eye for social, geographical and economical aspects related to social security. As an academic centre, SCNSS is devoted to research on national security issues in a comprehensive manner through the "prism of Indian civilisational knowledge and its security traditions," hence it is but fitting to rename it after the person whose life was dedicated to the security of the country and whose sole objective was advancement and modernisation of the defense forces in India," reads the letter.
Rawat served as the first Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) of the Indian Armed Forces from January 2020. He died in a fatal IAF transport helicopter crash near Coonoor on December 8. Prior to that, he was the Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff Committee as well as 26th Chief of Army Staff of the Indian Army.
JNU's SCNSS was established in 2018 to study national security issues. It currently offers a PhD programme in National Security.
