New Delhi: After months of persistently pursuing the issue of mandatory attendance, members of the Jawaharlal Nehru University Students' Union (JNUSU) on Friday held a meeting with with varsity's administration.
However a member of the students' union said "The meeting was called with a vague, unclear agenda over various issues in the varsity and in a restrictive way, where only the JNUSU president and general secretary were called."
Meanwhile, the varsity's administration stated that even after Vice-Chancellor M Jagadesh Kumar and other top officials assembled to address grievances of the Students' Union, JNUSU president
Geeta Kumar went on repeating the issue of attendance policy, even after her points were clarified.
"The meeting could have been used by JNUSU representatives meaningfully to raise student-related issues. But they constantly interrupted and raised extraneous demands," the statement by the JNU administration read.
It added that the students' demands were confined to withdrawal of the attendance rule and convening of the University's Academic Council (AC) Meeting.
"They were not prepared to listen to the responses given by the Officers of JNU administration. It was shocking that the JNUSU representatives refused to acknowledge that their illegal protest and confinement of the two Rectors," it further said.
However, JNUSU alleged that the V-C came prepared only to interrupt, intimidate and shut all dialogue.
The Union said that after repeatedly interrupting Kumari, the V-C asked Rector I to speak.
A member of JNUSU said, "Shockingly, Rector I asserted that the opinions of AC members do not count in the final AC decisions. Only the V-C, as the Chair of the AC, has the final right to decide!
"This is a clear admission and pathetic justification of how the V-C has been imposing his own agenda in the name of the Academic Council decisions, trampling upon the majority views of the house, and thus undermining the very democratic essence of university's highest decision making body, the AC."
Kumari said that during the meeting, the V-C resorted to threats and intimidations, instead of dialogue, and refused to declare the date for the next AC Meeting.
"Moreover during the talks, the V-C suddenly rose and left without any cordiality or conclusion of the meeting," she added.
The JNUSU president further said that it was "evident that this meeting (publicised through social media by the administration) was called only as a perception management exercise for the outer world just to cover-up V-C's authoritarian ways."
"And internally, the meeting was yet another attempt to brow-beat and intimidate the students and JNUSU office bearers. The administration refuses to respond to any of the concerns of JNUSU over the compulsory attendance issue," she added.
Now, JNUSU has demanded that the next AC Meeting must not repeat the past violations and must be conducted in a "democratic manner."
Meanwhile, responding to complaints by various students that they are daily facing denial of their fellowship on the pretext of compulsory attendance, the V-C dismissed the charge, saying that fellowships are not being denied.