JNU VC should resign: B K Chandrashekar

Senior Congress leader B K Chandrashekar slammed Jawaharlal Nehru University Vice-Chancellor M Jagadesh Kumar for allowing himself to be ‘summoned’ by the government, and urged that he step down.

“In the wake of the brutal attack on the faculty and the students of JNU, the Vice Chancellor’s pitiable, unconvincing statements reflect the predicament of several VCs who feel readily obliged to follow the diktats of the government,” Chandrashekar, a former minister, said in a statement.

“I was particularly disappointed that VC Jagadesh Kumar of a highly reputed centre of learning was ‘summoned’ by officials of the Human Resource Development Ministry and ‘take proactive measures to restore normalcy on the campus’,” he said, adding that Kumar was also “instructed to be more communicative and open” to students and media.

“I asked myself what I would have done in such a situation. Any self-respecting academic would not submit herself/himself to a sermon (which obviously was warranted in this case) from the government, however well-intentioned it might have been. Politics apart, the precious value of university autonomy would be well asserted by Dr Jagadesh Kumar’s resignation forthwith,” Chandrashekar said.