Massive Crackdown on BHU Students Demanding Restoration of Students Union
Last few days have seen massive crackdown on BHU students demanding restoration of Students Union election, which stands stalled since 1997. After the Lyngdoh committee Recommendation which says that student union elections should be held in each and every university, BHU students started demanding the resumption of their proper union elections but the BHU administration kept stone-walling the demand. In 2012, BHU administration adopted the via-route of so-called ‘Students’ Council,’ which was a puppet in the hands of the administration as the chairman of this council was a Professor!!As the demand for proper Students’ Union was never fulfilled, the protests and the voices of the students never remained silent.
The new government came with an assurance for the students in BHU that the union elections will restored. On the eve of PM Modi’s recent visit to Varanasi, the students intensified their movement and compelled the BHU administration to assure that the union elections will be held by 20th Nov.
But, soon after, the administration breached its promise and came up with an idea of conducting an ‘online referendum’, asking the student community whether they want the ‘Students Council’ or not. Then the administration declared on their own that the students have ‘no problem’ with the ‘Students Council’ and went ahead with the formation of the ‘Students Council!’
Against this arbitrary action, students organised a protest in front of the Central Office. A delegation from the protestors was called inside the office for negotiation and was badly beaten up. As this news spread in the campus, the student community came out on roads in large numbers to protest this administrative high-handedness and violence.
Massive State Crackdown:
The administration dealt this situation in its habitual and typical style, and ordered the police to lathicharge and fire. As a result of this, two students are injured by bullets and are in a critical situation, one being in coma. More than 200 students are injured and hospitalised at present. Police also entered inside hostels, brutally lathicharged, forcefully evacuated and sealed few of the hostels. End semesters are close and the students are facing situations where they are being thrown out of their hostels. Students who were simply demanding a proper union election are being brutalised and cheated again and again by the administration and the government.
Shameful double-game of ABVP:
Restoration of Students Union is a long standing demand of all common students of BHU. Several students’ groups and numerous common students are part of the struggle. Sangh-brigade have always maintained a stranglehold over BHU administration. ABVP, with the overt and covert backing of this powerful saffron lobby in the BHU administration, had routinely indulged in lumpen and violent activities and gone scot-free. In the present struggle also, which was going on in a democratic manner, ABVP made an appearance only to indulge in uncalled-for violence and provide fodder to the administration’s ‘justification’ for a brutal police crackdown. It is interesting to see how ABVP has disappeared from the scene having done their ‘job’ as agent-provocateurs, while hundreds of common students are bearing the brunt of police and administrative repression, violence and witch-hunt. It is obvious to the students of BHU that ABVP is playing a double-game, with cold calculation, of trying to show that they are with the movement while at the same time acting in a manner for facilitating police brutality and chaos and strengthening the hands of the government and the administration to keep the elections at bay under the pretext of ‘unfavorable law and order!’ This is the typical tactics of the ruling class politics in campuses. It is high time ABVP’s double-game as agent provocateurs in democratic students movement has to be nailed and defeated.
Stand by the democratic aspirations and struggle of BHU students: When we are in a movement against LCR, BHU students movement is also a fight against the Lyngdoh model which allows the administration to permanently scuttle students union election via the route of puppet ‘Students Council.’ The BHU situation has once again exposed the ruling class agenda behind the LCR. BHU student movement rejects the so-called ‘students council’ which remains a puppet in the hands of the administration.
WE expresses its solidarity with the common students of BHU against the administrative and police repression, violence and witch-hunt and for the restoration of Students Union election.
