Varsity chief continued with 'misgovernance', says JNUTA

New Delhi: The Jawaharlal Nehru University Teachers' Association has said that despite a referendum where 93 per cent of voting faculty members had decided to remove Vice-Chancellor Mamidala Jagadesh Kumar from his position as the varsity chief, Kumar has continued with his "misgovernance" of the university, which had culminated in the January 5 attacks inside the JNU campus, when a masked mob entered the varsity with sticks and iron rods and ran riot for almost three hours.

The JNUTA said that 300 out of the total 586 faculty members listed had turned up for the referendum despite the V-C's attempts "to throttle dissent on campus" and 279 of them had asked for Kumar's removal as V-C. Moreover, the teachers' association said that it had also submitted a dossier with allegations against the V-C to the HRD Ministry.

In the dossier, the JNUTA said that the fact that such an attack happened inside the campus itself was reason enough to ask for V-C Kumar's resignation but he and his administration's running of the university since he took his position as V-C have contributed to the attacks on students and faculty in the campus.

The teachers have thus claimed that such serious allegations against Kumar make a "comprehensive case" for his removal.

The JNUTA added that they had conducted a public inquiry against the V-C as well, where seven charges were put to him - of repeated violations of the statutory provisions an obligations, undermining the integrity of the faculty selection process, damaging interests of students aspiring for research, wasting public money and violating CEI Act and Reservation Policy, harassing teachers, assaulting democracy and promoting authoritarianism, undermining JNU's anti-sexual harassment policy and displaying a callous attitude towards the disappearance of Najeeb Ahmed.

Besides accusing V-C Kumar of violating court orders in some instances, the JNUTA has also alleged that his administration has severely undermined the functioning of institutions such as the Academic Council and the Executive Council and had also alleged that the administration had been arbitrarily denying promotions to select few faculty members.

In addition, the teachers have also said that the V-C had put the entire recruitment process under a shadow of doubt by allowing for the recruitment of teachers without appropriate expertise in the field.