Kolkata: West Bengal Governor Jagdeep Dhankhar faced protests by students when he visited the Jadavpur University (JU) on Monday to preside over the university court meeting.
When Dhankhar's car arrived on the university campus around 2 pm, students and the Trinamool-affiliated staff association showed him black flags. The students said that he should give answers to their questions.
"I came here to discuss with you and find a way out. I am not the governor who doesn't listen to students. If I had the answers to your queries I would have certainly let you know. I am neither a person from Central government nor state government," said Dhankhar to the JU students who questioned him on police action at Jamia Millia campus in the wake of Citizenship (Amendment) Act and the proposed nationwide National Register of Citizens (NRC) protest.
Dhankhar arrived at JU to attend the university court meeting on cancellation of the special convocation.
He left the meeting midway around 4.10 pm.
"We didn't stop him (Governor) from going to Aurobindo Bhavan on our campus.
We wanted him answer our
questions. He answer our questions diplomatically. He is acting like the spokesperson of the
BJP and not the Chancellor of our university. He is
least bothered about the security of the students. A few months ago BJP leader Babul Supriyo and his guards had abused our students. Instead of condemning the incident, the governor supported the BJP leader," said Afreen Begum, JU SFI member.
"We will stage demonstration if the governor turns up at the convocation. We don't consider him as the Chancellor of our university. He is acting like a BJP and RSS worker," said Ushasi Pal, another JU SFI member.
On Saturday, an emergency EC meeting was convened after a section of students gave a deputation to the university authorities, mentioning that they would boycott the governor, who was supposed to be present at the convocation to be held on December 24.
The Governor held the university's executive council resolution illegal and invalid and wrote to Vice-Chancellor Suranjan Das stating his stand on the issue on Sunday.
The convocation, that was scheduled to be held on Tuesday, has been divided into two parts — academic convocation and special convocation.
While the academic convocation consists of felicitation of graduate and post-graduate students, the special convocation is where the Governor confers DSc and DLitt.
"The special convocation at the varsity has been deferred," Das said.