‘Maharashtra civic body workers offered to pay my fine’

JNUSU president Kanhaiya Kumar on Saturday claimed that contractual labourers of municipal corporation in Mumbai have volunteered to pay the fine slapped on him by the varsity in connection with the February 9 event.

The 29-year-old Ph.D. scholar, who is among the students on an indefinite hungerstrike in JNU in protest against the punishments awarded to the students by JNU for involvement in the event, is in Patna on Saturday for a student meeting.

“Contract labourers of Mumbai municipal corporation hv collected 10K to pay my fine. We will not pay the fine and fight the unfair HLEC of JNU. But our solidarity long live! Chatra, mazdoor, kisaan ekta zindabad!,” he said in a series of tweets.

He also visited his family in Begusarai. Following the Patna visit, he has plans to go to Kerala to campaign for a fellow JNU student who is in the fray for May 16 elections.

Meanwhile, JNU students continued their hungerstrike for the third day.

The students also plans take hold some programmes, like screening of movies, public meeting and staging plays, at the protest site everyday in solidarity with the groups of students sitting on the hungerstrike.

“The Sanghi JNU administration is showing its malevolent, brutal and unyielding attitude towards the struggling students. When 19 students of this university is sitting on indefinite hungerstrike in this terrible weather, the administration is serving notices to students for the screening of the film Muzaffarnagar Baki Hai and that too after nine long months of the screening, ” Lata Sarang, one of the students sitting on hungerstrike, said

“We give an open warning to our V-C and his efforts to prove us criminals would go in vain. We are fighting for our right to dissent, for our right of expression, for our right of democratic space and for our right to question. We will fight till the end,” she added.

On basis of the recommendations of the probe panel, JNU had announced punishments against several students in connection with the event.

While Kanhaiya has been slapped with a penalty of Rs 10,000 on grounds of “indiscipline and misconduct”, Umar, Anirban and Kashmiri student Mujeeb Gatoo have been rusticated for varying durations.

Financial penalty has been imposed on 14 students. Hostel facilities of two students have been withdrawn and the university has declared the campus out of bounds for two former students.

ABVP member Saurabh Sharma, who was complainant of the event, has also been slapped with a fine of Rs 10,000 for blocking traffic.