Allahabad University Vice Chancellor RL Hangloo today hit back at the politicians on the offline tests and said they shouldn't interfere in it.
Highlights
- Nothing personal against Smriti Irani, was misquoted: RL Hangloo
- Vice Chancellor unhappy with forced to accept offline entrance tests
- His earlier comments came up in Parliament
After his headline-grabbing outburst about "political interference", Allahabad University Vice Chancellor RL Hangloo has written to the Rajya Sabha chairman clarifying that Education Minister Smriti Irani has "never interfered in the functioning of this university."
In his letter Prof Hangloo also said that Ms Irani "has always encouraged us with her rare flash of brilliance," and that there have been "twisted statements by the press and media...which should be ignored."
On Tuesday, Professor Hangloo had lashed out at what he called political interference for being forced to offer offline entrance tests after streamlining the whole process online.
"If politicians continue to interfere, we all will have to leave. Then government can run the university as per their opinion. Then it would be better to have MLAs or MPs as VCs in place of academicians," the vice chancellor had said in what was seen as a direct attack on the government, which has grappled recently with controversies and protests at some of the country's best universities.
Today he told NDTV, "If the government wants to fracture Digital India's progress, then what can I do?"
But he asserted that he has no axe to grind with Ms Irani and her ministry and alleged that he has been threatened by members of the RSS, the BJP's ideological mentor, and local politicians from the BJP, the Samajwadi Party and others, who have supported students on strike against the move to shift admissions online.
"There were some members of the Samajwadi Party...These RSS pracharaks also came, they said they would stone me," he alleged.
Mr Hangloo says he implemented online forms after a push by the government under Prime Minister Narendra Modi's pet Digital India programme. But after a fact-finding team of MPs visited the university, he got a letter from the ministry that it "has no objection to the offline option also" for this year.
Students allege that an online-only admission process discriminates against students from villages who do not have access to the Internet. They have called off their strike after Mr Hangloo rolled back his decision.