South Asian varsity: India blames Pak for adverse impact on functioning

India has blamed Pakistan for the impasse in the SAARC, adding that the stalemate impacted the functioning of the South Asian University (SAU), which is located in New Delhi and of late witnessed turmoil followed by suspension of students and teachers.

The SAU – an initiative of the eight member nations of the South Asian Association for Region Cooperation (SAARC) – has conveyed to the Government of India that five students and four members of the faculty were suspended in accordance with the rules of the varsity, the Ministry of External Affairs informed the Rajya Sabha recently.

Also Read | Ensure life of respect, dignity to Tamil community in Lanka: Modi to Wickremesinghe

The suspension of members of the faculty – Snehashish Bhattacharya, Srinivas Burra, Irfanullah Farooqi and Ravi Kumar – on June 16 triggered protests from a section of academia. Over 500 academicians, not only from South Asian countries but also from the US, UKand Australia and other countries around the world wrote to the foreign ministers of the eight SAARC nations, stressing the need for immediate revocation of the “unfair and arbitrary suspension orders” against the members of the faculty.

“It is well known that due to hurdles created by one SAARC member state, all SAARC meetings, including the SAU Governing Board Meeting have not been held in recent years,” Rajkumar Ranjan Singh, Minister of State for External Affairs, informed the RS in a written reply to a query by Elamaram Kareem of the CPM. “This has inevitably impacted the proper functioning of the University.”

He apparently took a subtle dig at Pakistan, which was blamed by India even in the past for stalling most of the SAARC initiatives.

The 19th SAARC summit had been scheduled to be held in Islamabad on November 9 and 10 in 2016. It had been postponed after New Delhi had decided to opt out, protesting the continued export of terror to India from Pakistan. No SAARC summit could be held in the past seven years, resulting in an impasse in the functioning of the organisation, which had come into existence in 1985.

The SAU was conceived at the 2005 summit of the SAARC – a bloc comprising India, Pakistan, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Afghanistan and Maldives. An intergovernmental agreement was signed in 2007 and the university started operations in 2010.

The SAU saw protests in September 2022, against the decision to bring down the monthly stipend of each of the students pursuing post-graduate degrees from Rs 5,000 to Rs 3,000. The varsity rolled back the decision, but the students continued to demand that the rate of stipend should be increased to Rs 7,000. Varsity authorities suspended five students on November 4, 2022, triggering protests. Some of the members of the faculty were served “show cause notices” in December 2022, with the authorities accusing them of “inciting” the students against “colleagues and the administration”, and going against the interest of the university.

“As informed by SAU, disciplinary action was taken against five students. The university authorities have informed us that due process as prescribed in the SAU Rules and Regulations was followed including the constitution of a High-Powered Committee to consider the matter of students’ indiscipline, including manhandling of the acting president in October-November 2022,” Singh informed the Rajya Sabha. The SAU also informed the MEA that four faculty members had been duly suspended for violation of the Code of Conduct as per SAU regulations for instigating students, he added.

The Minister of State for External Affairs also pointed out that the SAU, despite being located in New Delhi, was an autonomous international organisation with no direct control of the Government of India. It is jointly managed by the eight SAARC member nations through the governing board (GB), comprising two nominees from each member nation. India’s representatives to the board had to therefore work with the other 15 members to manage the affairs of the university, he said.

The varsity now admits students from all the South Asian nations and offers post-graduate and doctoral programmes in various disciplines, including economics, Computer science, biotechnology, mathematics, sociology, international relations and law. The varsity has recently relocated from its temporary campus at Akbar Bhavan in New Delhi to its permanent campus on Rajpur Road in Maidan Garhi on the outskirts of the national capital of India.