By TCN News
Aligarh: The Aligarh Muslim University, in a press release, said that the recent reports in the media regarding the meeting between the University’s Vice Chancellor Lt General (Retired) Zameeruddin Shah and Human Resource Development Minister Smriti Irani were “meant to create controversy and tarnish AMU’s image, when the university is engaged in efforts to maintain its ‘Minority Character’ and status as the second-best university of the country.”
The press release said that Vice Chancellor was invited by the Kerala Chief Minister to meet the HRD Minister at her office at 10:30 am on January 8 2016.
“I reached the appointment place at 10:20 am and was told by her secretary that HRD Minister was indisposed and the meeting was rescheduled at her residence,” the release quoted the AMU Vice Chancellor.
Adding that he did not attend the meeting, the VC was quoted as saying “I will reserve further comments on this.”
“At the meeting, the Chief Minster informed me that HRD Minister was adamant that the AMU Centres were illegally established and would not be funded by Ministry of Human Resource Development despite being told that the AMU centres had been approved by the highest policy making-bodies, the AMU Executive Council and Court, Government of India and the President of India,” said the AMU Vice Chancellor in the release, adding that he would meet the Prime Minister over this issue.
He has clarified that the AMU Act 1920 permits the university to have these centres including the one in Malappuram, Kerala, the release added.
Referring to the media reports that he was humiliated at the meeting, the Vice Chancellor was quoted in the press release as saying that “it would take a lot to humiliate a veteran of the Longewala Battle of 1971, who spent the better part of his 40 years in the Army fighting insurgencies in Punjab and North-East India and dousing communal passions in various riots.”