By Mumtaz Alam Falahi, TwoCircles.net,
New Delhi: The Jamia Teachers’ Solidarity Group has strongly condemned the move by the administration of Jawaharlal Nehru University to rusticate five student leaders, including the JNU Students’ Union president Sandeep Singh.
On Wednesday five student leaders, including three office bearers of the JNU Students’ Union were served show-cause notices and within hours their rustication orders were passed by the administration. JNU Students’ Union president Sandeep Singh has also been rusticated.
The rustication came after the students gathered outside the administrative block and demanded that the sale of admission forms be stopped. The student leaders have waged since long their struggle against commercialization of education, and they had been demanding slashing of prices of admission forms and prospectus. Rather than heeding their long pending demand, the JNU authorities served them a show-cause notice and asked them to respond in two hours. As they could not respond in the period, they were rusticated.
After rustication order, the student leaders sat on hunger strike.
Reacting sharply at the rustication, Jamia Teachers’ Solidarity Group (JTSG) said: At a time, when the state’s neo-liberal agenda is attempting to turn education into a commercial venture and universities into petty shops, we see a simultaneous effort to crush all voices of resistance by delegitimizing student politics, even the refusal to hold union elections.
“JNU has been a strong ideological political center of the students’ movement in India, offering a spirited opposition to anti-poor, anti-student policies of successive governments. The unprecedented rustication of the office bearers of the JNUSU is nothing but a blatant attempt to stifle organized challenge and rob the students’ movement of its vanguard and model,” the group said in a statement.
“JTSG stands in solidarity with the struggle of the JNU Students Union against privatization and commercialization of education, and demands the immediate reinstatement of the rusticated students.”