Protests held in the Jawaharlal Nehru University campus following police action. (PTI photo)
Three student leaders from the BJP-affiliated student organisation Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad or ABVP's Jawaharlal Nehru University chapter have reportedly resigned from their posts citing the police action on the university's campus on February 11 and Hyderabad University Research Scholar Rohith Vemula's suicide.
"Three office bearers of JNU unit of ABVP resign protesting Centre's handling of the row at the university," the news agency Press Trust of India said.
A purported letter written jointly by the three student leaders says they decided not to be "the mouthpiece of a government that has unleashed oppression of the student community."
The student leaders: Pradeep, Joint Secretary of the ABVP's JNU unit, Rahul Yadav, president of the ABVP's unit in the School of Social Sciences in the University and Ankit Hans, Secretary in the same unit, said in the letter they were "resigning from ABVP and disassociating ourselves from any further activity of ABVP as per our difference of opinion."
The letter said, their differences with the ABVP were over, "(the) current JNU incident" and "Long standing difference of opinion with party on MANUSMIRITI and Rohith Vermula incident."
The letter said the three did not support the incidents on February 9 in which anti-national slogans are alleged to have been raised on the JNU campus.
"Anti-national slogans on February 9 in university campus were very unfortunate and heart breaking. Whosoever responsible for that act must be punished as per the law but the way NDA government tackling the whole issue, the oppression on Professors, repeated lawyer attacks on Media and Kanhaiya Kumar in court premises is unjustifiable and we think there is a difference between interrogation and crushing ideology and branding entire Left as anti-national (sic)."
The letter says a "media-trial" has helped fuel an anti-JNU sentiment. "Every day we see people assemble at front gate with Indian Flag to beat JNU students, well this is hooliganism not nationalism, you can't do anything in the name of nation, there is a difference between nationalism and hooliganism (sic)."