The Hindu : New Delhi News : Protest march by JNU students

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Friday, Sep 23, 2005

New Delhi

New Delhi

Protest march by JNU students

Staff Reporter

NEW DELHI: Emphasising that education was a right and not a privilege, students and karamcharis of the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) staged a protest march in the Capital on Thursday. The protest led by the JNU Students Union (JNUSU) and supported by the University karamcharis also called for an increase in the budgetary allocation for education.

Expressing their disappointment over the recent Supreme Court ruling that removed the obligation of keeping reservations for SC/ST students from private universities, the JNUSU president, Mona Das, said on Thursday that reservations for SC/ST students was a Constitutional obligation and should be implemented, specially since the Court had shown the green signal for a NRI quota.

The karamcharis on their hand raised the freeze imposed on the recruitment of non-teaching staff. While pointing out that the increase in contractual appointments was leaving them insecure as they did not have a secure job even after giving over a decade to the University, it was demanded that karamcharis be kept on regular rolls.

Reacting to the recent Supreme Court observation on the need for student union elections to be monitored, JNUSU president Mona Das said: "On grounds of keeping a watch, the union elections cannot be curtailed. Student elections are not the only ones that sometimes witness hooliganism, it happens in other elections too. But to say it happens because of elections is not fair."

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