Jadavpur varsity calls EC meet today as a last-ditch bid to end logjam

Kolkata: Jadavpur University’s highest policy-making body, its executive council (EC), will hold an emergency meeting on Tuesday afternoon in a last-ditch attempt to break the logjam over arts faculty admission.
The decision came on Monday evening after the chancellor’s office offered a lifeline to the university administration in the form of a message, which “empowered” JU vice chancellor Suranjan Das “to take such action as may be necessary” to ensure a return to normalcy.


The university administration, for the past 48 hours, had pinned its hope on this lifeline from chancellor and Bengal governor Keshari Nath Tripathi’s office after a growing realisation that the impasse was not helping anyone. JU officials themselves have admitted that this type of an impasse is “unprecedented” during an admission season.

The growing pressure on the administration was evident from Monday morning, when VC Das entered the campus and spoke to students — on hunger strike since Saturday to protest against the decision to scrap admission tests — for more than 10 minutes.

“You will not have to see me in this position for long,” he told the protesters. “I have failed,” he added but without pronouncing the “resignation” word. His close confidants on the campus said he had expressed such a wish to state education minister Partha Chatterjee during their meeting last week.

A revolt by Philosophy professors, in the form of an announcement a little after 10 a.m., added to the pressure. A dozen faculty members said they would not have anything to do with the admission process, joining colleagues from English, Comparative Literature, Education, History and International Relations departments who made similar declarations over the last five days after the university executive council overturned its own decision to give equal importance to board exam and entrance test marks for admission to six Arts faculty subjects.

So, when the message came from Raj Bhavan, the university administration did not waste any time in accepting it with open arms. The chancellor’s letter, advising the JU V-C to take appropriate steps to restore normality during the admission season, said that “provisions of the JU Act, statutes and regulations” made it “apparent” that the VC would have to “abide by the executive council’s decision”. It then added: “It is needless to say in case of any exigency, you, as the VC, are empowered to take such action as may be necessary.”

This mail reached JU around 6.15 p.m. and, by 7.30 p.m., all executive council members had been informed that there would be an emergency meeting at 2 p.m. on Tuesday.

Before that, however, Das and pro-VC Pradip Kumar Ghosh had left the campus in a huff at 3.30 p.m. Das’s morning interaction with students, too, was testy. He told students that he had failed to stick to admission norms because he was duty-bound to go with the executive council decision. “I have to go by the EC decision. I have sought the chancellor’s advice. I would request you to suspend the hunger strike till I receive that advice and take steps accordingly,” he added. One of the students on hunger strike, International Relations postgraduate student Somashree Chaudhury, took ill soon after this interaction and was hospitalised.

The governor issued a separate appeal to JU students, urging them to uphold the university’s reputation and withdraw the hunger strike. The chancellor was concerned abouth the students’ well-being and the university’s reputation, Raj Bhavan press secretary Manab Banerjee said. Students, however, stuck to their agitation and said they would take a decision only after the Tuesday’s executive council meet.

Jadavpur University Teachers’ Association (Juta) members and politicians made a beeline for Raj Bhavan on Monday, a day after the governor consulted education minister Chatterjee. Tripathi spent a large part of the discussion with Juta members examining JU rules to check how he could help the university break the deadlock. “The chancellor discussed various academic and technical points and told us that he would do what he deemed fit,” Juta assistant secretary Partha Pratim Ray said.

Left Front leader in the Bengal Assembly, Sujan Chakrabarty, called on the governor before the Juta delegation and sought his intervention in resolving the JU imbroglio. “I told the governor that the education minister’s uncalled-for interference led to the crisis,” Chakrabarty said.