IIMC Prof quits, says govt targeted him; I&B Ministry denies charge

A senior faculty member of Indian Institute of Mass Communication (IIMC) on Friday resigned alleging that he was ‘targeted’ by the I&B Ministry for supporting the protests over Dalit student Rohith Vemula’s suicide and JNU and FTII issues.

Amit Sengupta, an Associate Professor in the department of English Journalism, quit after an order was issued transferring him to the premier media school’s campus in Odisha’s Dhenkanal district, which he slammed as a ‘political decision’.

Information and Broadcasting Ministry officials said that a recent inquiry into incidents at the premier journalism school by I&B Ministry Joint Secretary Mihir Kumar Singh showed that Sengupta had in a Facebook post asked students to carry out protests after Vemula’s suicide.

In his resignation letter, Sengupta said that he had been ‘targeted’ as he “supported the solidarity protest for Rohith Vemula (of Hyderabad Central University) in the campus, organised independently by students of IIMC in which other faculty members too participated.”