New Delhi:
The Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) has alleged that slogans threatening academic peace have surfaced on Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) campus. Writings such as 'Free Umar Khalid' and 'Long Live Naxalbari' have gone up on the university's walls, according to the RSS-linked outfit.
The ABVP has also claimed that All India Students' Association (AISA)'s national president Neha Bora raised slogans in support of Umar Khalid and accused leftist student groups of vitiating the campus atmosphere.
Khalid, a former JNU scholar and left activist, was arrested in 2020 under the stringent Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act and has been in jail since, awaiting trial in a Delhi riots conspiracy case.
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The ABVP further alleged that some offensive remarks have been inscribed alongside a portrait of Hindutva ideologue VD Savarkar on the campus. Describing such incidents as detrimental to JNU's peaceful and academic environment, it questioned the politics of the leftist outfits and the Left-led JNU students' union.
The outfit also alleged that controversial political slogans are being promoted instead of issues concerning student interests and demanded that the university administration take cognisance of the matter, identify those responsible, and initiate action.
Mayank Panchal, president of the ABVP's JNU unit, stated that national figures cannot be insulted using freedom of expression as a shield. Writing offensive remarks alongside Savarkar's portrait and scrawling radical political slogans on walls do not constitute freedom of expression, he asserted.
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JNU unit secretary Praveen Piyush remarked that the university is not the fiefdom of any single ideology and that vandalising public property is not in the interest of the students.
In another university in Delhi, Jami Millia Islamia, slogans linked to Jammu and Kashmir had recently appeared on its walls amid protests over the demand of the reintroduction of student union elections.
However, Abin Basil, a student of the university, claimed that the contentious slogans were planted at the behest of the university's authorities.
"We strongly condemn those slogans. Our demand remains simple and clear: hold student union elections, The university administration is putting on a dramatic show of trying to persuade us to call off the strike. Today, professors and security personnel tried to dismantle and remove our protest tent," he said.