Hundreds of protesters, including faculty members and students of the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) protested near Mandi House today demanding removal of Vice-Chancellor M Jagadesh Kumar. The protesters marched from Mandi House to the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) lamenting Kumar’s questionable handling of violence on Sunday when over 30 students and faculty members were beaten up with iron rods and hammers.
Calling Kumar a “mobster”, the JNU teachers association (JNUTA) said the prestigious university has suffered immensely during his autocratic rule.
The VC is being severely criticised for his role in dealing with the violence that erupted on Sunday evening. Students, alumni, and teachers termed Jagadesh Kumar incompetent for the job.
Mamidala Jagadesh Kumar, who took charge as the Vice-Chancellor of JNU in 2016, has been since been criticised over a host of issues on the campus. His tenure is riddled with episodes of mismanagement.
A professor of electrical engineering at IIT Delhi before being appointed as JNU VC in January 2016, he has repeatedly dismissed allegations of his allegiance to a particular political organisation.
Kumar, who comes from a pure science discipline, was given the charge of administering JNU, an eminent institution of humanities disciplines in the country.
Kumar was hadpicked by the then President Pranab Mukherjee despite HRD ministry’s objections. Smriti Irani, was not in favour of appointing him, since Kumar was teaching at IIT-Delhi then, and Irani felt he didn’t fit the university system.
Here are some of the instances where his role was found to be either lacking or questionable.
Kumar’s first brush with controversies was on February 9, 2016, when some students affiliated to Left student organizations organised an event on the third anniversary of the hanging of Afzal Guru to protest his capital punishment. Just moments before the event, the permission was withdrawn by the administration allegedly under the pressure from RSS-affiliated Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP).
However, students went ahead with the protest and anti-India slogans were allegedly shouted by then JNU students’ union president Kanhaiya Kumar and others, who were then charged with sedition.
A few months later, Najeeb Ahmed, a first-year MSc student at JNU, went missing after an alleged brawl with members of the ABVP at Mahi-Mandavi Hostel in Delhi. The JNU VC’s alleged inaction in his disappearance was severely criticised. The students alleged that he took no action against the ABVP activists who assaulted Najeeb before he went missing.
In the beginning of 2017, while attending an event to commemorate the Kargil victory, the Vice-chancellor spoke about installing a tank on the campus to instill patriotism in students. The university had celebrated ‘Kargil Vijay Diwas’ for the first time on campus.
A few months later, Kumar approached the Delhi High Court to prohibit students from protesting in the vicinity of the administration block of the university. The university had alleged that due to continuous agitations and sloganeering, the normal functioning of the administrative couldn’t happen.
Later in that year, for the first time in the history of the JNU, the JNUSU was not called for the Academic Council meeting, the highest decision-making body of the varsity. JNUSU and JNUTA said the JNU statute mandates that the JNUSU officers are special invitees to the Academic Council and by not doing so they have “illegally debarred” the legitimate student representation.
Around September 2017, Kumar’s administration through an allegedly arbitrary move, dismantled Gender Sensitisation Committee against Sexual Harassment (GSCASH) in an executive council meeting citing University Grants Commission guidelines. They replaced it with a new, largely nominated body – Internal Complaints Committee. The students protested against the move for months and even conducted elections to it by defying a circular from the administration that the committee was non-existent.
In 2018, the administration ordered the delinking of MPhil and PhD. courses, the move was followed by massive uproar from the student community. The order stated that the entrance exams will be held only for the MPhil programme and upon completing their MPhil they would have to apply afresh for the Ph.D programme
In April 2018, the VC was accused of “wrongfully implementing” the May 5, 2016, UGC Gazette to unleash massive seat cuts in MPhil/PhD programmes.
In the MPhil/PhD admissions for 2017-18, the reservation for SC was 1.3% rather than the mandated 15%, for ST it was 0.6% rather than 7.5%, for OBC it was 8.2% rather than 27% and for the PWD it was 0.3% rather than the mandated 3%,” said a release from SC/ST/OBC/PWD Students and Teachers of JNU.
In the same year, the students had alleged that the administration had slashed the annual library funds from Rs 8 crore to Rs 1.7 crore and stopped auto-renewal of several e-journals and subscriptions saying that the University Grants Commission has refused to release funds.
In 2018, the JNUSU accused the administration of unilaterally increasing the entrance exam fee by over 300 per cent, delinking MPhil and PhD courses without proper procedure, denying deprivation points to students in reserved categories, and blocking opportunities to conduct research.
Around August last year, the JNU teachers’ association alleged that the varsity rules were bent to accommodate right-wing candidates. The VC by amending the JNU statutes had delegated to himself the power to add names to the panel of experts which decides on the new names for appointments. This changed the earlier procedures, weakening the Academic Council’s role in faculty appointments.
Kumar was accused of political nepotism in filling up teaching positions in JNU. Former ABVP leader Tapan Bihari and former JNUSU Joint Secretary of the ABVP Saurabh Sharma among others were appointed as faculty members.
Around September, a fresh controversy hit the JNU after its emeritus professors over 75 years of age, including historian Romila Thapar and economist Prabhat Pattnaik, were asked to submit their work in the last two years for an evaluation. The move drew flak from academics from across the country.
For the past few months, the University has come to a complete standstill and the students are on the verge of losing a semester due to ongoing protests against a massive hike in hostel and mess fee. There was a whopping 300% hike in rent structure.
During the university’s convocation in November last year, the HRD Minister was allegedly held hostage by protesting students as the VC had refused to meet the students who wanted to discuss the fee hike.
Last week, the students boycotted the registration for the semester. Out of around 8,000 students, only 800 registered, which apparently brought the semester to a standstill.
