Spying, Surveillance and Draconian Crackdown in AMU Once Again !

A series of extremely disturbing incidents over the past few months have revealed how the Aligarh Muslim University has been turned into a virtual police state.

Draconian Crackdown on Protesting Students

A couple of months back, some students of AMU started protesting against the rampant corruption and misappropriation of funds by the hostel administration in AMU. Not only had the quality of food deteriorated; the mess charges had also steeply increased by Rs 250 per month per student.  The students of one hostel (VM Hall) appealed to the AMU administration for permission to take charge of the mess for one month to set an example before them about its functioning. Subsequently, they received permission and under the charge of the students themselves, the quality of food improved dramatically. This created enormous pressure on the AMU administration. Their corruption had been clearly exposed, and students from other hostels too began demanding permission from the administration for running their own messes.

In order to document the success of the VM hall experiment, Afaq Ahmad (an M. Phil student of Mass Communications) one day started video shooting with his handycam inside the Dining Hall; asking students about their opinion on the functioning of the mess. Almost immediately, the Provost and Wardens of the hostel (who got to know about the filming because of the CCTVs installed in the hostels) rushed to the Dining Hall and stopped the shooting. Afaq was served a show cause notice by the Proctor Office, and subsequently his hostel facilities were withdrawn. Shockingly, Afaq was thrown out of the hostel even though there is NO rule prohibiting video shooting in the hostel premises. Clearly, the intension of the AMU administration was to punish Afaq for his role in the movement against the administration’s corruption, and also to deter other students from protesting.

After Afaq’s hostel eviction orders, the students conducted a huge signature campaign demanding immediate revocation of his punishment. The AMU administration, continuing with its anti-student and draconian track record, responded by issuing 20 more show cause notices against those who conducted the signature campaign – making its intensions even more clear.

When the students’ protests increased, the AMU administration suspended Afaq on the false pretext that a letter had been sent by him to the AMU VC ‘threatening’ to break all the CCTVs in the campus if his hostel facilities were not restored immediately. Interestingly, this letter which Afaq had allegedly sent had the signatures of several other students, and was posted from outside the AMU campus. At the time when the letter was allegedly posted, Afaq was admitted in the University Health Centre, where he had been quarantined for chicken pox. Obviously, then it was impossible for him to go around the AMU campus collecting signatures and posting letters!

When the University Administrations Turn Into Spies….

Clearly, the AMU administration is going to unprecedented levels to victimise protesting students, in the hope of clamping down the growing resistance to its corruption. And in order to operationalize this gameplan, the AMU administration has employed an extensive surveillance mechanism. AMU has a ‘Local Intelligence Unit’ (LIU), along with as many as 72 CCTVs installed all over the campus – from the university library, to all the departments, and even in all the hostels. This LIU, run predictably the AMU’s Proctor Office, has become a convenient tool in the hands of the AMU administration whenever it wants to penalise students who protest against anti-student administrative policies, or who expose the rampant corruption of the administration. A whopping Rs 10 crores that has allegedly been spent on the CCTVs, which has NOT been officially funded by the UGC or any other government agency.

And the cameras are just one part of the university’s ‘surveillance’ mechanism – as many as 300 men in khaki are part of AMU’s ‘Watch and Ward’ staff, whose job is to ‘patrol’ the university campus in the name of ‘maintaining law and order’.

The LIU is NOT just being used to spy on students – the victimisation of Dr. Siras, leading to his shocking death, starkly revealed the shady nature of this omnipresent spy agency. In February this year, Dr. Siras (who was a reader in the Modern Indian Languages department of AMU) was illegally filmed in his house, and the AMU administration shockingly suspended him for being a homosexual. Students allege that the LIU had a part to play in the illegal filming inside Dr. Siras’s residence. The FIR filed by Dr. Siras had named four AMU employees – Proctor Zubair Khan, Deputy Proctor Fareed Ahmad Khan, Spokesperson Rahat Abrar and Media Adviser NAK Durrani. No action has yet been taken against them for this blatantly illegal invasion into people’s private lives.

CPI(M) Scholar supports culture of spying!

What is most unfortunate is that in this dangerous and reactionary game of the AMU administration, it has found support from the ‘progressive’ CPI(M) lobby led by Prof. Irfan Habib. In a shocking stance (reported in Tehelka, UP edition, 30th April), Prof. Habib has justified the presence of spies and LIUs in AMU. According to him, they have been present in AMU since 1980-81. He has said that there is nothing wrong in the existence of such agencies – since it ‘frees teachers from administrative chores’ and enables them to concentrate on academics! It is indeed shocking that such a defence of blatant violation of civil rights in a university campus is coming from a respected historian of Prof. Habib’s stature. The fact that he commands considerable sway in the AMU campus and draws clout from CPI(M)’s political establishment, makes his stance doubly detrimental and goes against the struggle for democratising the AMU campus.

AISA strongly condemns the LIU and the use of CCTVs to control public and private life in AMU. Such tactics are dangerous for the democratic functioning of any university community, and must be strongly resisted. We also demand that all the punishments against protesting students be revoked with immediate effect, and a thorough enquiry into the rampant corruption of the AMU administration be initiated.

Presidential Enquiry Going On Regarding Corruption Of The AMU VC

Azis, vice-chancellor since June ’07, is himself at the centre of some turmoil. He is now the subject of an inquiry set up by the President of India after instances of financial bungling were reported by members of the university’s executive council. She appointed a second panel last month after the first committee’s members resigned last year reportedly due to lack of cooperation in the probe.

The list of charges is long: claiming travelling allowance against university rules, paying his income tax from the varsity fund, bringing in furniture worth several lakhs from Kerala (Azis’s home state) and paying another Rs 12 lakh for its transport, spending close to Rs 2 crore to refurbish the V-C’s residence (including installation of jacuzzis in the bathrooms), buying a Honda Civic despite the availability of two cars, and adopting improper tendering practices, causing losses of millions to the varsity. The principal auditor general of UP has established several of these charges and in a despatch in November ’09 says: “There’s  a complete collapse of financial management and the VC and registrar, instead of stopping this frequent financial irregularity, themselves became part of it.”

Even the UGC openly stated that it has withheld Rs 8.38 crore because of financial irregularities by the university administration during 2008-09.

— Excerpts from “These Walls Have Ears” published in Outlook Magazine, March 8, 2010