The All India Students' Association (AISA) wrote a letter to President Droupadi Murmu today, Tuesday, October 31, regarding the troubled developments at Allahabad University (AU). The students have highlighted how fee hike protests at the varsity led to the imprisonment of certain student leaders, and asked for the president's intervention.
"We have seen that students have been persistently protesting against the overall 400 per cent fee hike in all subjects of AU. They have been consistently sitting on hunger strikes to protest against the massive fee hike, which the students rightly believe would have detrimental consequences and exclude a large section of students from weak and marginalised communities," AISA said in a statement.
The student union has alleged that the varsity administration, instead of considering the students' demands, used forceful repression, and sent students behind bars under "baseless allegations". Two students, Ajay Yadav and Jitendra Dhanraj, are still imprisoned. It further alleged that the administration served suspension notices to students who protested over this imprisonment and a campus entry restriction order was issued against them.
Notwithstanding, the students carried out protests for campus democracy and other demands such as opening the library 24/7, ending the newly imposed curfew timings that curtail the freedom of movement on campus, and asking for clean drinking water. However, the varsity once more used repression, AISA claims.
"Following this, student leaders Manish Kumar, Harendra Yadav, Bhanu, and Anurag Yadav have been suspended and their campus entry was banned...We believe that it is not a mere coincidence on the part of University Chief Proctor Rakesh Singh that all these students who have been targeted and suspended come from the Dalit community and the Backward class," the statement says.
"Moreover, in an unprecedented move in the history of AU, the administration refused Harendra Yadav permission to sit for exams even when no official inquiry committee was set up to look into the matter. When students gathered to protest on October 17 and demanded that the student must not be refused to sit for an exam, students again met with repression and this time Chief Proctor Rakesh Singh brutally assaulted one of the protesting students Vivek Kumar, who comes from the Dalit community, by snatching a lathi from one of the security personnel and continuously hitting him," the statement alleges further.
According to AISA, Vivek suffered severe injuries, and though the students demanded that a police complaint be lodged against Singh, the police did not cooperate. In view of all these incidents, the student body has come up with three demands, as mentioned in its letter.
They are:
1) Release of all the student leaders under imprisonment who were involved in the fee hike protest
2) Suspension and campus entry restriction orders against all the student leaders must be revoked
3) Strict legal action must be taken against Chief Proctor Rakesh Singh under the SC/ST Atrocities Act for brutally assaulting a Dalit student and he must be removed from his position
