The Hindu : New Delhi News : JNUSU demands immediate revocation of suspensions

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Feb 25, 2007
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New Delhi

New Delhi

JNUSU demands immediate revocation of suspensions

Staff Reporter

Notices given to 10 students after they gheraod the Registrar

NEW DELHI: Even as the Jawaharlal Nehru University Students' Union (JNUSU) here on Saturday admitted that the mode of protest adopted earlier this week was not in keeping with the democratic traditions of the campus, it has demanded immediate revocation of suspension notices served on 10 students and office-bearers of the staff association.

In a resolution passed at its council meeting over the weekend, JNUSU said the suspensions "before inquiry was an unprecedented step aimed at attacking the entire student movement in the most undemocratic and authoritarian manner. Such kind of arbitrary action against any section of the JNU community is unacceptable... "

However, in the resolution JNUSU regretted Monday's incident when Registrar Avais Ahmad was allegedly gheraoed by students as their posters on workers' rights were removed from the administrative block. Soon after the administration issued suspension orders.

Meanwhile, the JNUSU council has expressed its commitment to ensure proper minimum wages and working conditions for the workers on the campus.

Authorities blamed

Squarely blaming the authorities for the situation, the resolution said: "The administration must realise that its own lackadaisical attitude on students and karamchari demands particularly to ensure proper minimum wages... has resulted in its standoff with the two unions ... and has precipitated matters in this way."

JNUSU has been demanding scrapping of illegal contracts for mess workers and safai karamcharis, reinstatement of 15 retrenched electrical workers and making public labour contracts.

In response to the charge, JNU the administration has clarified that it has time and again discussed these matters with the students' union and rubbished JNUSU's claims that they have not paid heed to workers' issues.

"The Central Public Works Department (CPWD), a government organisation has been entrusted with the construction activities of some of the buildings and they are carrying out the work through their prescribed procedure of implementation through contractors. The contract workers are hired by such contractors and CPWD is the primary employer," it said on Saturday.

The administration also claimed that as per the University Grants Commission/ Ministry of Human Resource Development guidelines, JNU "cannot give even temporary status to the daily wage/ muster roll workers, leave alone regularisation of any casual worker, not in service after 1993."

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