A day after her MPhil/PhD admission was cancelled by the Board of Studies at Jamia Millia Islamia (JMI), Safoora Zargar received support from about 150 individuals and activists who have appealed to the Vice-Chancellor of JMI to revoke the decision.
In the notice issued on August 29, JMI stated that Zargar's admission had been cancelled "in anticipation" of the Faculty Committee's approval of the decision. "The whole process seems like a farce," Zargar tells EdexLive. "Although I am not very hopeful that they will respond to me, I still want to knock on every door I can. I will write another appeal to the VC after receiving the official letter of cancellation of my admission," she adds.
The notice states that one of the reasons for the cancellation of her admission was that she did not apply for the extension available for women scholars before the stipulated deadline. According to communications with her supervisor regarding this matter, that Zargar shared with the VC in an earlier letter, she had been informed that she cannot apply for a second extension awarded by the UGC to research scholars in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to JMI's regulations. While she waited for a response for her second COVID extension the window to apply for an extension as a woman scholar, which she was advised to do by her Research Advisory Committee and her supervisor, also closed. Safoora was told that an exception would be considered on the basis of the progress of her work. However, during the RAC meeting on July 5, Zargar says she was verbally told that her progress was not satisfactory, and therefore, she will not be awarded an extension.
"When my supervisor said my work is not up to the mark, why was it not transferred to another committee for evaluation? Why did my emails and letters to the administration go unanswered? When such a proceeding is initiated against me, I should be able to escalate my matter," Zargar says.
Zargar was one of the anti-Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) activists who were arrested under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) in connection with the riots that broke out in northeast Delhi in February 2020. She was pregnant at the time and was granted bail in June 2020.
Zargar, who had registered for the integrated MPhil/PhD programme at the Faculty of Social Sciences at JMI, had her PhD topic modified from 'Ghettoisation among Muslims in Delhi: An Epistemological Exploration' to 'Socio-spatial segregation among Muslims of Delhi: A case study of Ghaffar Manzil' in October 2022. In November 2021 when she submitted her chapter outline for the thesis, her supervisor in an email, told her that she had made "good headway" in the research, done her fieldwork, and identified categories and concepts to articulate her research topics. However, she was also informed about certain issues in her work, which, the supervisor said, were explained to her at length during her RAC meeting. "Overall a good attempt. But very little time is left and you seem to have overshot your deadlines not by days or weeks but by months in submitting this chapter outline," says the email from the supervisor.
The notice cancelling Zargar's admission states that she had failed to submit her MPhil dissertation within the prescribed term of five semesters and an additional semester allotted due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This period ended on February 6, 2022. Zargar says that the university had introduced delays in the process of her submission of the MPhil thesis. In her emails, she informed her supervisor that her dissertation was complete.
"The appeal I now intend to file with the VC will demand the restoration of due process. It is not due process if you don't respond to the student's grievances," Zargar adds.
The letter written by activists and individuals against the cancellation of Zargar's admission states, "To add to her suffering, Jamia Millia has denied extensions to complete her degree in the Department of Sociology. These have been granted unconditionally to research scholars en masse by the UGC because of the havoc wreaked by the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020-21. Since the universities and departments were shut down and access to libraries was closed off, all research scholars were granted multiple extensions. Yet Safoora was deemed ineligible for more than one extension without any legitimate justification."
"I have known the faculty at the Social Sciences department since 2016. They are sad that an undemocratic process has been initiated to cancel my admission. But no one has spoken up against it, as far as I know," says Zargar.
