The student activists of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad's (ABVP) Jawaharlal Nehru University unit demanded that the university give students with lower CGPA, who were debarred from registering, a provisional registration keeping in mind the COVID-19 pandemic and the educational disruptions it has caused over the past year and a half.
They said that the students can be asked to retake the tests to attain the required CGPA. The students also alleged that the 64 students who were debarred from registering at the School of Language, Literature and Culture Studies, were subjected to discrimination based on the ideology they subscribe to. "The pandemic has disrupted education and there has been a digital divide as well. There are students from remote areas for whom the educational journey over that past year has been very hard. There is disparity in how much one could study or research during the lockdowns. We are requesting the administration to be a bit considerate and allow these students with a provisional registration and another chance to clear the CGPA under equal circumstances," said ABVP JNU President Shivam Chaurasia.
The students also demanded an enquiry committee to point out teachers who were discriminating among students based on their ideologies, caste, language or region. "Some course in-charges (teachers) from centres like Japanese, German and Pashto in the School of languages, are targeting students on the basis of political orientation, region, and activism. It is well known that they openly threaten students and fail them if they join organisations other than the left-leaning ones," said ABVP JNU Unit Secretary Rohit Kumar.
The students said that the issue is not new but actually decades old. "This year more than 90 students have been denied promotion. The exact same pattern of failing students in examination has been employed by these "comrade in faculties" every year. Some centres are notorious in targeting students — Japanese and German featuring on top of the list," said Rohit. "The elitism of Comrades in faculty can be openly witnessed when they target students who have poor English or have political leanings other than left. Apart from this these comrade in faculties publicly declare in classes that they will fail a particular student and then they go on doing this with impunity. Their discrimination reached zenith when they approved passing grade from CGPA 3 to CGPA 4 which is way above the 33 per cent passing marks approved by every institution," he added.
