West Bengal Governor Jagdeep Dhankhar on Wednesday said that the protest during Calcutta University’s convocation on Tuesday was deliberately held by an “unruly mob” which forced him to return without attending the event. A section of students was protesting against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) at the venue of the convocation.

“Yesterday’s chain of events, which did not happen spontaneously, marred the finest moment in the recent times in the state,” he said, referring to the conferring of honorary D-Lit on Nobel laureate Abhijit Banerjee by the Calcutta University. He said the event was “deliberately allowed to be eclipsed by ugly forces” that cannot be called “academic or intellectual” but “evil forces of disruption”.

He added that the protest marred the “163 years’ tradition” of Calcutta.