Students’ March to Parliament Against Lyngdoh Committee recommendations, proposed Central Universities Act and CBCS

For the past two months, leaders of the AISA-led JNUSU have been visiting campuses across the country to campaign against the undemocratic Lyngdoh Committee recommendations (LCR), and various anti-student legislations being mooted by the Modi government’s Ministry of Human Resources Development (MHRD). Responding to JNUSU’s call, hundreds of students from JNU, Delhi University, Jamia Millia Islamia, Patna University, Veer Kunwar Singh University (Ara), Allahabad University, Tilka Majhi Bhagalpur University, Jadavpur University, Punjab University, Central University of Haryana and Trishur College Kerala participated in a United Students’ ‘March to Parliament’ on 3 March 2015 against the LCR and the MHRD’s proposed Central University Act.

Through the ‘common’ Central University Act, the MHRD is trying to force all central universities to follow a ‘common’ admission, a ‘common’ syllabus and ‘transferrable’ faculty. This will kill the autonomy of central Universities like DU and JNU, kill their uniqueness, kill their respective areas of strength in teaching and research. Through this Act, the saffron brigade wants to achieve its long term ideological agenda of saffronisation of higher education. In the name of ‘common’ syllabus and course structure, this Act will enable the RSS ‘think-tanks’ of ‘Dinanath Batra variety’ to impose their whims on all Universities including JNU, DU etc. By ‘centralising all recruitments’, the Central Government will have a free hand to dictate faculty appointments of its choice. And the provision to ‘faculty-transfer’ will act as a weapon to keep the upright faculty members who ‘do not fall in line’ under permanent threat.

We have seen that in recent years, students have repeatedly been treated as guinea pigs for ill-motivated experiments: the forced impositions of ‘Semester system’, then ‘FYUP’ and now a so-called CBCS (Credit Based Choice System). Like the FYUP, the CBCS is also a combination of silly and shallow Foundation, Core and Elective papers. This will dilute the academic quality of Honours courses and over-burden students and teachers with useless courses, when colleges lack both permanent teachers and enough infrastructure. On the one hand, the Lyngdoh recommendations are being used to scuttle campus democracy and effective participation of students in the decision-making process. On the other hand, the Government is trying to thrust anti-student policies on Universities such as the Choice Based Credit System (CBCS) and the Central Universities Act.

The students were therefore marching to Parliament to demand an immediate repeal against the undemocratic Lyngdoh committee recommendations which govern student union elections, and to defend campus democracy, academic autonomy and democratic rights of students in higher education. The protest march to Parliament was met with a crackdown by the Delhi Police. Protesting students were lathi charged, several students including women students were manhandled by the Police, and some students including JNUSU office bearers were detained in the Parliament Street police station.

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