New Delhi:
The Left parties today gave a notice in the Rajya Sabha pressing for a discussion over the disciplinary action against Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya, the students charged with sedition along with Kanhaiya Kumar, who was suspended for a semester by the Jawaharlal Nehru University or JNU on charges of indiscipline.
Two more students have been removed for two semesters. Mr Khalid and Mr Kumar, both PhD students, were fined Rs. 20,000 and 10,000 on the recommendation of a university panel that investigated their role in a controversial on campus event on February 9 in support of terrorist Afzal Guru. Mr Khalid and Mr Bhattacharya, said to be organisers of the event, have been removed from the university for a semester. The students' union plans to protest the decision today on campus.
CPI lawmaker D Raja said in the Upper House that the university's decision was "not acceptable." Describing the university's decision as a "revengeful act on students", Mr Raja said "Parliament cannot sit like mute spectators" leading to commotion in the Rajya Sabha. "What happens in the university is our responsibility because we pass the act," CPM General Secretary Sitaram Yechury said in the House.
"JNUSU rejects the punishment handed down by the administration on the basis of a farcical committee!" Mr Kumar, who is the president of the students' union, has tweeted.
Mr Khalid had posted on Facebook, "A farce is what this inquiry has been from day one, made to witch-hunt and punish students by hook or crook. Do we need to remind you, Mr Jagdish Kumar (JNU VC) that unlike you the students and teachers of this campus are not pliant stooges of the RSS."
The students were arrested days after the February 9 event held to mark the anniversary of the 2013 hanging of Afzal Guru, during which controversial slogans were raised. They were released on bail a few weeks later.
The university has accused the students of "arousing communal caste feelings, creating disharmony and colluding in the unauthorized entry of outsiders".