After more than a month-long deadlock between students and the Aligarh Muslim University administration, an atmosphere of dialogue emerged on Thursday.
Vice-Chancellor Tariq Mansoor once again appealed to the students to return to classes through a video in which he pointedly addressed the issues. Prof. Mansoor “regretted” the events of December 15 when the administration called the police inside the campus and said “sorry” to the students who suffered injuries during police action.
“We have always depended on our proctorial team and on pro-proctors and members of the teaching staff to sort out any issue and we will keep depending on them in future too,” said the V-C.
On the number of FIRs registered against the students, he assured that the university would take up those cases and “no innocent person and student” would be “harassed or targeted”.
Prof. Mansoor further assured, “As far as other grievances of students are concerned, all things will be discussed once normalcy is restored.”
He stated that as an academic institution, AMU believed in democratic functioning. “Academic institutions have all the rights to argue, discuss and dissent, if necessary,” said the V-C.
Later, Deans of the faculties of arts, social sciences, and life sciences signed on letters of demands of the students. They were countersigned by the V-C.
However, some engineering students continued their protest. Students of Abdullah Girls College also boycotted classes on Thursday.
“It seems the university is limping back to normalcy. A large section of students returned to classes on Thursday. Exams were conducted in Unani and Ayurvedic Tibbia College. In some faculties, the university administration is considering rescheduling the exams as students have asked for time for preparation,” said university spokesperson Shafey Kidwai.
Sources said the “threat of sine die” worked and compelled students to return to classes. “Not just our careers, our protest against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act would have suffered in case of sine die,” said a student, requesting anonymity. “See, even if the V-C resigned, the new incumbent would have asked them to return to classes and asked for some time to look into their demands,” said a teacher who was involved in breaking the deadlock.
Candlelight march
In a related development, students took out a candlelight march to condemn the incident of firing near Jamia Millia Islamia on Thursday in which a student was hurt.The Aligarh Muslim University Teachers’ Association also released a statement describing the incident as “barbaric and cowardly”.
