Govt seeks report from West Bengal govt on Jadavpur University protests

Students and teachers at the university are protesting the arrest of student leader Kanhaiya Kumar for allegedly making anti-national comments during the Afzal Guru event.

A day after pro-Afzal Guru slogans were raised in Jadavpur University (JU), posters calling for “freedom” for Kashmir, Manipur and Nagaland were found in the campus on Wednesday even as two rival groups of students brought out rallies in the varsity premises.

Meanwhile, shouting nationalist slogans and holding India’s national flag, few students held a rally at the JU campus on Wednesday evening and torn few anti-national posters.

As a counter to this, other students also brought out a rally.

“I have seen in the media that a large section of students who were present in the rally, including some of the office bearers of the students union, have unequivocally said they have completely disassociated from these anti-national slogans”. We had no connection with that rally. We think that very few students are involved in this case. “They have told me”, Das told media persons here.

Das said he saw some student union leaders also walking in the rally yesterday in which pro-Afzal slogans were raised. Moreover, the signatories said that while they were themselves divided on the matter of Guru’s hanging, they were “unanimous that students should have the right to freely discuss this issue”.

He ruled out lodging any police complaint, saying the university was a place for rational thinking and free speech.

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Meanwhile, BJP has strongly condemned the incident of Jadavpur University. Any Indian would condemn whatever happened there. “It is only then that they will understand the true value of nationalism”, said BJP national secretary Rahul Sinha.