Pay fine and get registered: HC to JNU students

The Delhi High Court today reiterated its single judge's order asking four JNU students to pay the fine imposed on them by the varsity if they wished to get registered for the next semester of their PhD course.

The Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) had imposed a fine on the four students for allegedly "barging" into an academic council meeting on the admission criteria for MPhil and PhD programmes.

A bench of Justices Vipin Sanghi and Rekha Palli allowed the students to deposit their fines by July 28 and said that if the fine was paid then no other hindrances be created in the registration process.
 

However, if the fine was not paid then the students would have to vacate their respective hostels, the court said and listed the students appeal, against the single judge order, for hearing on July 31.

Earlier, a single-judge bench had on July 20 told the four students -- Mulayam Singh, Shakeel Anjum, Dileep Kumar and Prashant Kumar -- to deposit the fine and to go ahead with registration for the next semester.

The single judge's order had come on the students pleas challenging JNU Chief Procter's July 13 order by which they were not only slapped with a fine of Rs 10,000 each, but were not allowed to register for the next semester, their scholarships and library facilities were stopped and they were asked to vacate their respective hostels.

The students, represented by senior advocate Colin Gonsalves, have challenged the JNU order on the grounds that they do not have the means to pay the fine as they belong to poor families.

In their plea filed through advocate Gunjan Singh, they have also claimed that the order disallowing registration was "unprecedented and contrary to the practice" as students, who did not pay the fine imposed on them, have always in the past been allowed to register, subject to payment on leaving the institute.

All the four students, who are in the third and fourth year of their respective PhD programmes, have contended that they were not provided with the documents and material based on which the final report of the Procter was arrived at on June 19.

The report had charged them with forcible entry into the meeting and raising slogans, thereby disrupting the proceedings, their pleas have said.

Their petitions also claim that their appeal against the report was dismissed by the Vice Chancellor on July 5, subsequent to which the Chief Procter passed the order of July 13.

According to the JNU report, a group of students was protesting outside the room where the Council meeting was underway.

They allegedly "broke open the latch of the meeting room door" and came inside and "shouted at" the Vice Chancellor, it had said in its preliminary report of December last year.

The varsity had said that the students belonged to Birsa Ambedkar Phule Students' Association (BAPSA), Democratic Students' Union (DSU), Students' Front for Swaraj (SFS) and United OBC Forum.

It had said that the protesting students were demanding that the Academic Council reconsider its decision to "adopt" a UGC gazette notification, dated May 2016, whereby interviews became the sole criterion of admissions to MPhil and PhD courses.