Bengal rights group to move president against governor

A rights group Saturday said it would lodge a complaint with President Pranab Mukherjee against West Bengal Governor M.K. Narayanan for making "provocative remarks against students".

The Association for Protection of Democratic Rights' (APDR) had earlier approached the West Bengal Human Rights Commission on the issue, but it had rejected the complaint.

"APDR has decided to complain to the president against Narayanan as the WBHRC rejected our appeal against the governor citing his constitutional immunity," APDR secretariat member Ranjit Sur said in a statement.

"The president is the governor's appointing authority. We will seek the president's intervention so that the governor withdraws his sermon of beating up students and apologises," the statement said.

Narayanan, while reacting to two incidents of students assaulting teachers inside colleges in the state, Aug 31 said: "I feel the students need to be beaten up."

A full bench of the commission, headed by its chairman Justice (retd.) Asok Kumar Ganguly Friday rejected APDR's complaint and observed there was no possible violation of human rights and as such the matter doesn't warrant the panel's intervention.

"We feel that educational institutions must be protected from any kind of outrage by any act of indiscipline by students. Moreover, the governor's comments enjoy constitutional immunity," a commission official had said here.