Jawahar Lal Nehru University, famously known as JNU, is amongst the most prestigious universities in India. The illustrious list of the alumni coming from JNU put it amongst the most popular educational institutes in the country. But sadly, since the last few weeks, JNU is in the news for all the wrong reasons.
Ever since the administration at JNU announced a steep hike in the fees, the routine at the university has been largely disturbed. It has been nearly a month since the protests broke out against the sudden hike in the fee, but the log jam does not seem to be resolved anytime soon.
Now, the students are taking their protests a bit further and are contemplating boycotting the semester-end exams. What makes this announcement even more serious is the fact that the university administration has explicitly expressed its intent of invoking the rulebook.
On one side the student union at JNU, JNUSU, has called for total “non-cooperation” with the administration over the recent hike in the hostel fees. While on the other side, the JNU rulebook clearly mentions that the students who do not meet the academic requirements in the upcoming semester exams can be removed from the university.
As mentioned by the Vice President of the JNUSU, Saket Moon, many departments in the university have agreed to boycott the semester-end examinations.
Some of the departments that have given their consent are Centre for German Studies, Centre for Historical Studies, Centre for Persian and Central Asian Studies, Centre for study in law and governance, Centre for informal sector and labour studies, Centre for Indian languages, Centre for the study of regional development, School of Arts and Aesthetics (SAA), Centre for social medicine and community health, and Centre for Russian studies.
Although a high power committee set-up by the Ministry of Human Resource Development of the central government recently concluded meetings with the representatives of the students, JNUSU is firm on its demand. Protesting students have called for a complete rollback of the new hostel manual in which the fee hike was proposed.
Now that the discussions between the committee and the representatives have been held and the report has been submitted, the JNU’s Teacher Association led a protest march to the HRD Ministry. They demanded that the report submitted by the high power committee should be made public.
Though, the protest march was stopped by the police near Shastri Bhawan. Instead a representative from the teacher’s association was escorted to the HRD ministry.