Students protest disciplinary action by JNU for ‘activism’

A group of 15-odd students of Jawaharlal Nehru University, including members of the students union, staged a protest on Monday against the alleged disciplinary action taken against multiple students for acts of “activism”.

They burnt documents containing the order that around 10-odd students will not be allowed to register for the new academic session.

The protest meeting, held outside the administrative block of JNU, saw a group of students equivocally condemning the alleged “autocratic and authoritarian” regime at the university.

They students set fire to the order signed by the chief proctor that claims 14 students have been restricted from registering for the new semester. The order said they were found guilty of misconduct by a probe committee in two separate incidents.

Students found guilty of unlawfully confining JNU authorities, during the protests following Najeeb Ahmed’s disappearance and disrupting Academic Council proceedings, have been barred from registering for the new session unless they pay a fine, a JNU official said.

The list of students includes JNUSU members and Umar Khalid, among others.

Mohit Pandey, who is one of the 14 students and the president of JNUSU, claimed the procedure was against the rules of the university, as they were not allowed to restrict the registrations of any student.

However, officials maintained they were within their rights to do so. “In case you are fined, or are found guilty of anything illegal, the university can stop registrations... Students can register when they clear the fines. Two students have already paid the fine,” said the official.

JNUSU members have said that they may consider legal recourse, unless the decision is not revoked.

The Central Bureau of Investigation on Monday told the Delhi High Court that it has been prbing the disappearance of JNU student Najeeb Ahmad for just a month and needs more time for it.

The high court had on May 16 ordered the CBI to take over the probe into the mysterious circumstances surrounding the disappearance of the student who has been missing since October.

The CBI told the court that it would be filing its report in a sealed cover.

The court was hearing Najeeb’s mother, Fatima Nafees, plea seeking to trace her son, a first-year MSc Biotechnology student.

The student went missing on October 15, 2016 after he had an altercation with some students belonging to the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) in the campus.

The Delhi HC has sought a status report from the city police on a PIL seeking a ban on plying of buses from other states in Delhi by private operators in contravention of the law.

A bench of acting Chief Justice Gita Mittal and Justice C Hari Shankar directed the DCP (traffic) to file a report in response to a plea alleging inaction on the part of the Commissioner of Transport and the law enforcement agencies. HTC