The Jawaharlal Nehru University Students' Union has reportedly been denied permission to meet the newly-appointed Vice-Chancellor, Prof Santishree Dhulipudi Pandit on Tuesday, February 8. JNUSU claimed that they were told the VC had urgent engagements to deal with and were later informed that they would be able to meet her only if they were given such an intimation from her office.
"We decided to approach the VC today with a delegation after we received a notice from the Registrar about her appointment. We believed it was our responsibility as the varsity's student representatives to greet the VC and introduce ourselves, especially since she said in her notice that she was looking forward to working with the students," said the President of the JNUSU, Aishe Ghosh.
The students had visited the VC's office with a charter of demands that highlighted the issues that JNU had faced due to the pandemic. "We only wanted five minutes of her time to submit the charter so she can read it later, but we were denied entry by the guards," she adds.
When asked if they had taken a prior appointment to meet with the VC, the students claimed that it wasn't part of the "culture at JNU" to require appointments to get in touch with the VC, whose office stays accessible to them.
"We are aware of her political affiliations, but for us, she is our Vice-Chancellor, and we approached her in the interest of the varsity. We heard yesterday that students of a certain organisation had met her to extend their congratulations, so we didn't think we would be denied entry," said Ghosh.
Yesterday, on February 7, after the appointment was announced, a delegation from the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), which is the student wing of the political party RSS, met the Vice-Chancellor to welcome and congratulate her. "We met the Vice-Chancellor for about 10 minutes to speak about the reopening of the JNU campus and the initiatives taken up by the ABVP on campus, including the 125-day satyagrah. The VC was enthusiastic in her response and was keen to improve JNU," said Unit President of JNU, Shivam Chaurasia, in a chat with Edexlive. "She told us that she will be available any time the students wish to meet," he added. Photos of the delegation, which included the President of ABVP's JNU unit's President and Secretary, with the VC, Prof Pandit, were shared on Twitter.
Edexlive has tried to reach out to the VC and her office for a comment on the issue and this copy will be updated if and when we receive a response.
