Accommodation, not sedition, main focus of new JNUSU president

Months after the infamous on-campus rally where slogans calling for India’s “dismemberment” were raised, the mood in Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) is sombre. Sitting near tents pitched outside the JNU administrative block, the newly-elected JNU students’ union (JNUSU) president Mohit Pandey said the university’s housing facility is inadequate to accommodate the fresh batch of students.

Mr Pandey said the student union has thrown its weight behind the students who have been lodging in the tents since last eleven days. According to an estimate, over 1,400 students from the fresh batch will not get hostel rooms despite applying for it. Karthik Raja, a research student who is living out the makeshift tent, told this newspaper that the students have demanded that they be given house rent allowance if the housing facility on campus is inadequate.

The JNUSU president said the union will raise the issue of hostel crunch during the university’s upcoming academic council meeting. Criticising the university authorities for asking the protesting students to remove their tents, he said: “Being students of a public university, we need to protect the idea of a public space.”

The JNU administrative block compound saw a nearly two-month long protest following the February 9 event commemorating the 2013 hanging of the Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru. But when asked about the missing graffiti and posters — that cropped up during the marathon protest on the administrative building’s walls — Mr Pandey said: “We are going to put the new ones up soon.” In a massive cleansing exercise recently, the JNU authorities have removed all signs of the bygone phase of campus unrest.

Terming the clean sweep by the Left Unity in the JNUSU polls early this month, Mr Pandey said it is a victory of the “broader Left unity against the government oppression.” Three students belonging to Left organisations were arrested in the sedition row of February. Left Unity is an alliance of the All-India Students’ Association (Aisa) and the Students’ Federation of India (SFI).

Before enrolling for a research programme in JNU in December 2013, Mr Pandey was a student of the University of Hyderabad. He said his research is on “Social Media and Hindutva Public.” Social media plays a huge role in shaping the public perception around an issue, according to him.

Reminiscing his days as an activist for the Occupy UGC movement led by the JNUSU last year, Mr Pandey said: “We were able to build a strong resistance against the neo-liberal policies of the BJP-led Central government, be it the fund cut in education or selling out of India’s higher education to the WTO.”