Outgoing NLSIU registrar denies any wrongdoing

Professor O V Nandimath, who resigned as registrar of NLSIU on Saturday over the allegations that he had delayed the appointment of the Vice Chancellor, denied any wrongdoing.

“I’m not going anywhere. But ethically, I had to step down. Considering what happened with the Student Bar Council which accused me of delaying the appointment of Professor Sudhir Krishnaswamy as VC, it was impossible for me to continue,” he said, speaking after the university’s convocation ceremony in Bengaluru on Sunday.

Senior and current students who spoke to DH said they were pleased by how things had turned out. “We could not be happier,” a student said.

Nandimath, however, insisted that there was no wrongdoing on his part. “I had no role to play in the VC’s appointment. I was only a messenger. It is a complicated system,” he reiterated.

Bar Council of India (BCI) chairman Manan Kumar Mishra, who had said that the student protest that paralysed NLSIU from September 21 to 23 was wrong and unnecessary, seconded Nandimath.

During his speech at the convocation ceremony, he made a veiled reference to the protests, by denouncing student strikes at Banaras Hindu University and Jawaharlal Nehru University which he said had ‘spoiled’ the premier institutes’.

When asked about the NLSIU protest, he was blunt: “There should be a limit. If it is bonafide, no problem, but if it crosses a limit, it will spoil the career of students and the name of the institution,” he said.