To raise safety concerns of protesting pupils in Parliament
A large number of NIT-Srinagar students who were lathi-charged by the J&K Police earlier this month today staged a protest at Jantar Mantar here with the support of the National Students’ Union of India, demanding that they should be shifted to an NIT in some other state. The agitating students alleged that they had not got any assurance from the state government as well as the Centre over their safety concerns.
Their demands include that they should be transferred to an NIT extension in Jammu or to an NIT in other states; 50 per cent faculty members should be non-Kashmiri in NIT-Srinagar; action should be taken against the J&K Police for lathi-charge on innocent students; FIR against the students who unfurled Pakistani flag on the campus; chargesheet filed against 20 non-Kashmiri students should be withdrawn; the Tricolour should be hoisted on the campus; and CRPF personnel should be deployed at the institute.
The protesting students, while expressing their unwillingness to go back to Srinagar, said they had met Deputy Chief Minister Nirmal Singh, HRD Minister Smriti Irani and a few other senior leaders of the BJP but in vain. Nirmal clearly told them that he could not help them, said the protesting students on condition of anonymity.
The students said they were afraid of a backlash from the NIT-Srinagar administration so they were not willing to disclose their identity. Their lives were under threat and they could not go back to Srinagar, they said.
Some of the parents who sat at the protest site also expressed their apprehensions about the future of their children.
Former Minister of State, Ministry of Home Affairs, RPN Singh who visited the protest site assured the students that the Congress would raise this issue in Parliament to protect the non-Kashmiri students.
“There has been unrest among the students at Hyderabad University, JNU, Allahabad, NIT-Srinagar and elsewhere since the BJP-led NDA has come to power. The government wants to suppress the students’ voice in the name of nationalism,” he said.
The issue of NIT-Srinagar should be discussed at an all-party meeting in Parliament, Singh said.
General secretary of the NSUI Maheshmurti Leni, who also met the agitating students, said the Congress at a meeting held this evening decided to take up the issue with the government.
