Janjivan Bureau
New Delhi: JNU Students Union has strongly opposed the administration’s move to cover the ‘sit-in’ site used by them for protests at administrative block with grille, alleging that it was aimed at “disrupting” the movement on the issue of missing student Najeeb Ahmed.
JNUSU president Mohit Pandey said the Students Union was raising “difficult questions” to the university administration therefore it was trying to “disrupt” the ongoing protest.
“After continuous efforts to disrupt JNUSU’s protest on Najeeb’s issue, where we were asking some difficult question to the JNU administration, they have come with a new trick to snatch admin block as a protest site from us,” he said.
Grilles were installed outside the administrative block late yesterday night thereby restricting access to a parking lot and the porch used by the students for protests.
Covering the sit-in site with grille will not stop protests at the administrative block and the JNUSU will continue it, Mohit said.
“Grilling sit-in site will not stop protests at ad block.
We are not going to stop our protests, sit-in, hunger strikes at ad block. We will keep on doing them,” he said.
Former JNUSU vice president Shehla Rahid too slammed the move by terming it as an attack on creative power of students.
“The grill installed by JNU VC @mamidala90 shows how afraid he is of the creative power of students’ protests, of the power of ideas, questions,” she said in a tweet.
The students said they will protest the move of installing grille at their protest site by fastening ribbons on it.
However, the Akhil Bhartiya Vidyarathi Parishad(ABVP) will continute its protests despite the grille as the sprawling campus has ‘acres of land for doing so”.
“Despite the grille being installed at the parking lot, ABVP will continue its struggles for students interests. There is 1,000 of acres of land in JNU,” said Saurabh Sharma, ABVP leader and former JNUSU joint secretary.
He, however, said the place where grille was installed was meant for parking lot and although university administration has not given any reason for doing so but its a “minor” issue as for as students freedom is concerned.
“JNU student politics is not based on any piece of land. Protests require courage and not any particular piece of land,” he added.
