Uttar Pradesh BJP president Laxmi Kant Bajpai has said that Vice Chancellor of Aligarh Muslim University Zameer Uddin Shah should either resign or he should be dismissed by the Centre for his alleged controversial statement on granting access to undergraduate girl students to the varsity's library. "AMU V-C Zameer Uddin Shah should either resign or else he should be dismissed by the central government," Bajpai, who was here to attend a two-day conference of BJP workers of this region, told reporters here yesterday. He said Shah's recent controversial statement on the issue of granting access to undergraduate girl students of women's college in the university's central library and later on the issue of banning an English daily should compel the HRD Ministry to take notice of the present state of affairs on the campus.
Senior BJP leader and incharge of the party's membership campaign Swatantra Dev Singh today announced that the party workers would hold a protest on December 1 at the gates of AMU campus against what he described as "discriminatory treatment" meted out to late Raja Mahendra Pratap, one of the benefactors of the varsity, when it was established in the year 1877. Singh claimed the AMU was built on the land reportedly donated in the 1870's by Raja Mahendra Pratap, the ruler of the erstwhile state of Mursan in this district. He said the AMU V-C was out of tune with the realities of the present day world.
Announcement of protest by BJP is likely to snowball into a political confrontation after some senior local Samajwadi Party leaders announced that they would prevent the saffron party workers from holding demonstrations on December 1, which also happens to be the birthday of Raja Mahendra Pratap, a noted freedom fighter and a distinguished alumnus of AMU.
Meanwhile, the AMU authorities have strongly refuted Singh's allegations and termed it as "total fiction". "Raja Mahendra Pratap is one of the heroes of the AMU's brotherhood. We are proud of the fact that in the year 1915, Raja Mahendra Pratap had been declared as the President of India's first Government in exile formed in Kabul with Maulana Barkatullah," Shafey Kidwai, media advisor to the AMU V-C told PTI. In the annals of India's freedom movement, this entire episode, which was a major challenge to British rule in India, is remembered as the Silk Conspiracy Case, he said.
"It is also true that Raja Mahendra Pratap's father had donated money along with many others when the Mohammedan Anglo -Oriental (MAO) College was established. He also later donated a bungalow which he had used as a hostel when he was a student of the AMU in the early 20th century," he added.
Kidwai claimed that BJP leaders were perhaps unaware that the entire land, on which the main AMU campus was built, was purchased by the MAO College managing committee in the early 18th century when Raja Mahendra Pratap was not even been born.
"All these purchases were done through registered sale deeds pertaining to lands owned by the military and some European residents of this area. All these documents are available in the university archives," he added.
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