Unavoidable circumstances: Burdwan Univ postpones counselling of PhD

Kolkata: In the backdrop of a Maoist inmate featuring in the merit list, the University of Burdwan has postponed its merit-based counselling for admission to the PhD programme in History citing ‘unavoidable circumstances’.

The scheduled date for PhD admission in the varsity was on Tuesday. However, the sudden notification regarding the postponement of counselling assumes significance as Arnab Dam, a Maoist inmate presently lodged at Hooghly District Correctional Home, is one of the candidates of the merit-based counselling. Dam has secured the first rank in the interview process for PhD conducted at the university recently. “One inmate from a correctional home is on the merit list.

We have a six-month course during PhD in offline mode. We have sought a report from the Superintendent of the Correctional Home where he is lodged about the security aspect surrounding the need for the candidate to appear physically. In this backdrop, we have postponed the counselling process,” a university official said.

Dam was arrested in connection with Maoist attack at the Silda camp of the Eastern Frontier Rifles (EFR) in 2012 from Balarampur in Purulia and has been lodged in prison since then. He was sentenced to life imprisonment in February 2023.

He was a state committee member of CPI Maoists in Bengal and was active even in areas of neighbouring states of Bihar, Jharkhand and Odisha.Dam got his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in History from Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) from the correctional home and secured first division in both.

Dam, the son of a retired judge and a resident of Garia, has been a meritorious student throughout his academic career. He passed his higher secondary examination from Narendrapur Ramkrishna Mission and joined mechanical engineering at IIT Kharagpur.

In 1998, while in his third semester, he mysteriously disappeared from the campus. He was arrested in 2005 for Maoist activities and after some months in prison, he was out on bail. In 2019, he cleared the State Eligibility Test (SET) examination and set a precedent in the history of correctional homes in Bengal by becoming the first person to do so.