Union minister Bandaru Dattatreya has been accused of pushing the university to take action against Rohith Vemula.
Union minister Bandaru Dattatreya, who has found himself at the centre of the spiraling political controversy over the suicide of research scholar Rohith Vemula in Hyderabad, today denied that he had written a letter to the human resources development ministry.
Mr Dattatreya said on August 10 last year, he received a representation on the "state of affairs in the University of Hyderabad" in his capacity as the lawmaker from Secundrabad, which "disturbed" him greatly. On August 29, he received a second representation.
He forwarded these to the human resources development ministry "in the hope that things in the campus would change for better," he said.
"The University of Hyderabad is an autonomous institution... I have no role in the administration of the University... My role was only limited to forwarding these two representations," the minister said.
Mr Dattatreya has been named in the complaint made to the police after the suicide of Rohith, a student of Hyderabad University. Vemula was found hanging in the university hostel on Sunday, days after the university suspended him and four other Dalit students.
Protesting students have alleged that Mr Dattatreya's letter to the ministry has helped bring pressure on the university to take action on Rohith and the others over the attack on another student, a member of BJP youth wing Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad.
Mr Dattatreya's letter had described the university as den of "casteist, extremist and anti-national politics" and the ministry had written five times to the University with questions on the action taken.
The university has denied any political pressure on it in this case. Ms Irani's ministry has indicated that the letters it sent were routine, since it was bound by rules to acknowledge and forward letters by lawmakers. The university, it had insisted, was autonomous.