Internet services suspended after AMU violence over Jinnah row
aligarh — Internet services were on Friday suspended in Aligarh district in the wake of unrest in Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) after the Jinnah portrait row. “There will be no internet services from 2pm today to 12 midnight tomorrow,” district magistrate Chandra Bhushan Singh said. This has been done to prevent rumour mongering, he said.
It had come to the administration’s notice that some anti-social elements could vitiate communal harmony by spreading rumours through videos, using internet services, his order said.
Tension prevailed in Aligarh and students continued with their sit-in at the university’s Baab-e-Syed gate, where police used force and resorted to baton charge to control protesters on Wednesday.
They are boycotting classes for the next two days.
The students offered Friday prayers at the scene of the dharna in which a large number of teachers and other members of the AMU fraternity participated.
Wednesday’s clash took place when the students were demanding action against right-wing protesters who entered the campus and went on rampage over their demand to remove the Pakistan founder’s portrait from the student union office, where it has been hanging for decades.
The incident came days after the university administration refused permission to hold a Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) Shakha (meet) in the campus.
The row started after local Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MP Satish Gautam wrote to AMU raising objections to the decades-old portrait. The University said portraits of all life members of the student union hang there. Jinnah, a founder member of the University Court, had also been given this honour before Partition.
AMU vice-chancellor Tariq Mansoor on Friday visited the Jawaharlal Nehru Medical College Hospital > Aligarh authorities suspended Internet services to prevent rumour mongering following the violence in AMU over Jinnah portrait row. > According to the administrationsome anti-social elements could vitiate communal harmony by spreading rumours through videos. > AMU Teachers’ Association sent a memorandum to the where three of the students injured in the police lathi-charge are being treated. The VC later visited the protesting students and assured them of his “solidarity”.
AMU Teachers’ Association (AMUTA) has sent a memorandum to President Ram Nath Kovind asking him to “urgently institute” a high-level judicial inquiry into the incident. They said members of President urging him to order a judicial probe into the incident where members of certain outfits entered the campus and disrupted the peaceful academic environment there. > AMUTA secretary Najmul Islam has alleged that the police, instead of preventing the right-wing hooligans from entering the campus, “remained mute spectators”. certain outfits entered the campus and disrupted the peaceful academic environment there.
The teachers also plan a peace march up to the district collectorate. AMUTA secretary Najmul Islam said that they have urged the President to treat the matter seriously as it involved a breach in the security of former vice president Hamid Ansari. — PTI