JNU vice-chancellor Santishree D. Pandit’s decision to dismiss a professor accused of sexual harassment has brought to the spotlight past allegations against the university administration of inaction or inconsistent action in similar instances.
Angomcha Bimol Akoijam, a professor with the Centre for the Study of Social Systems and a Congress MP from Manipur, was sacked last week on a recommendation from the university’s Internal Committee (IC) that handles sexual harassment complaints. The action came within five months of the complaint being lodged in May 2026.
The JNU teachers’ association has alleged the university administration violated rules by failing to take the IC’s recommendation to the executive council.
While Pandit acted promptly against Akoijam, her predecessor M. Jagadesh Kumar, the previous VC, was accused of promoting or protecting professors accused of sexual harassment.
An MTech-PhD programme student had in July 2015 lodged a complaint with the university’s Gender Sensitisation Committee Against Sexual Harassment (GSCASH), alleging sexual harassment by T.V. Vijay Kumar, then an assistant professor with the School of Computer and System Science (SC&SS), JNU, according to multiple university sources and documents.
Vijay Kumar was the student’s MTech supervisor. The university set up an
inquiry committee.
While the inquiry was on, a selection committee formed by the university in December 2016 recommended that Vijay Kumar be promoted from assistant professor (Stage 2) to assistant professor (Stage 3). Jagadesh Kumar approved the recommendation.
Within two months, the selection committee again recommended a promotion for Vijay Kumar from Stage 3 to Stage 4, and this was accepted too.
In October 2017, Vijay Kumar was promoted to professor. In July 2019, he was appointed dean of SC&SS, a post in which he completed two consecutive terms of two years each and given a third term.
After Vijay Kumar’s appointment as dean, the student, who was then doing her PhD, is learnt to have complained to the university that the new dean might create problems for her when the time came to submit her thesis. She also wanted to know the progress made in four years on her complaint of July 2015.
By 2019, the GSCASH had been replaced with an Internal Complaint Committee (ICC). The ICC’s presiding officer wrote to the student in December 2019 that the complaint screening committee of the GSCASH had recommended in August 2017 that “The complaint does not merit further investigation. The case may kindly be closed.”
The student is learnt to have written back to the ICC’s presiding officer in February 2020, saying the decision to close the case was “one-sided” since she had not been given a chance to appear before the committee.
Sources said she wrote that it was “shocking” that the ICC had informed her about the decision two years later. The sources said the student also wrote that she considered the decision to close the case a “great injustice to a poor girl”.
It is learnt that the student appealed to the ICC to reconsider the decision and sought an opportunity to appear before the committee. But the university did nothing.
Subsequently, Pandit replaced Jagadesh Kumar as VC in February 2022. In January 2024, Vijay Kumar was appointed dean of the School of Engineering.
A member of the Society for Scientific Values, a watchdog on academic misconduct, said the JNU administration had earlier protected Atul Johri, a professor with the School of Life Sciences, on account of his political affiliation with the ruling dispensation despite written complaints of sexual harassment by several of his girl students in 2018.
“This led to a protracted student agitation on the campus and he was asked not to go to the lab for some time to pacify the students,” he said.
“The point here is not whether Akoijam is innocent or guilty, but whether the JNU administration and the government have the credibility to be non-partisan and ensure equality before the law.”
Eight women students had accused Johri of sexual harassment in 2018. An FIR was filed against him. Johri was arrested and granted bail immediately in March 2018.
Later, the ICC gave him a clean chit and the executive council accepted the recommendation in February 2019. The students then petitioned Delhi High Court challenging the clean chit to Johri.
Before the allegations against Akoijam, Pandit’s tenure had witnessed the filing of sexual harassment complaints against three professors and an assistant professor.
They are Ram Sagar (School of Physical Sciences), Santosh Kumar Shukla (School of Sanskrit and Indic Studies), Swaran Singh (School of International Studies) and Venu Puvvadi (assistant professor with the School of Social Sciences).
An executive council meeting considered the IC’s recommendations in these cases on April 16, 2025. (The ICC had been replaced by the IC in 2024.)
Under JNU and UGC rules, the IC can recommend “minor punishments” (which include censure, withholding of promotion, reduction in pay scale by one stage for up to three years, and withholding increment) or “major punishment” (a reduction to a lower stage in the scale of pay, grade, post, compulsory retirement, or dismissal from service).
The IC recommended minor punishment for Sagar and Shukla. It suggested Shukla be made to attend workshops on women’s safety at workplaces. Documents that this newspaper saw were unclear about the specific punishment awarded to Sagar.
The IC recommended major punishment for Singh, and he was dismissed.
As for Puvvadi, the IC found that he had failed to adhere to “expected professional and ethical standards” and recommended the issuance of a warning, mandatory gender sensitisation, and restriction from informal engagement with students.
The executive council approved the recommendations and actions were taken. However, a member of the executive council filed a dissent note against each of the decisions.
It is learnt that the member protested against the minor punishments handed over to three faculty members even though the natures of the complaints against them were similar to that against Singh.
In the case of Singh, the member raised technical objections to the specific rules under which he was dismissed. The high court later stayed the dismissal and Singh was reinstated.
An email has been sent to the VC seeking her reaction to the allegations against the JNU administration of a double standard in dealing with complaints of sexual harassment. Her response is awaited.
Separate emails have been sent to Vijay Kumar and Johri seeking their comments on the allegations of sexual harassment against them. Their response is awaited.