Vice Chancellor M Jagadesh Kumar has put future of JNU at stake: JNUTA

Vice Chancellor M Jagadesh Kumar has put the future of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) at stake by violating the university Act, the JNU Teachers' Association (JNUTA) told the High Powered Committee (HPC) of Ministry of Human Resource Development here on Thursday.

"JNUTA has informed the HPC about how the current Vice Chancellor has been violating the JNU Act and has put the future of the university at stake. JNUTA's understanding of university autonomy is rooted in the conception of democratic self-governance and not the freedom of the VC to run amok and destroy the institutional framework for such governance," said the teachers' elected body in a statement.

JNUTA's 13-member Executive Committee met the HPC set up by the Union Ministry of Human Resource Development and placed before it the background to the current crisis at the Jawaharlal Nehru University.

"The JNUTA informed the three-member committee that the present crisis is the culmination of misgovernance of the University since the present Vice Chancellor took office," read the statement.

JNUTA also claimed that the Vice Chancellor is guilty of having compromised the university's autonomy and sought to run the administration in an authoritarian manner, and his continuation stands in the way of restoring normalcy in JNU.

"The JNUTA appraised the HPC about the details of mismanagement, neglect of academic spending in favour of a manifold increase in spending on non-academic heads such as security, the outsourcing of the JNU entrance examination, massive seat cut, repeated violations of reservation policies, and lack of transparency in JNU governance," reads the JNUTA statement.

"We outlined the ways in which the present administration was being run by cronyism, where established practices in appointments of deans and chairpersons have been set aside so that individuals of the Vice-Chancellor's choice may be installed in all decision making bodies of the university, thus paving the way for an entirely autocratic method of functioning," JNUTA added.

JNUTA has made three points 'clear' in its statement that there is no possibility of normalcy being restored on the JNU campus unless hike in hostel charges is withdrawn.

Second, the current fee increase impasse has been created by the current administration to legitimise their wasteful expenditure and financial mismanagement.

Third, the possibility of addressing the recurrent problems arising from the way JNU is being governed is impossible while the current Vice-Chancellor continues in office.