Students of the prestigious Jadavpur University have planned a massive rally in Kolkata on Saturday to protest the police excesses over the past few days.
The protesting students are sticking to their demands for the resignation of vice chancellor Abhijeet Chaterjee, on whose instructions the students were mercilessly beaten up and girls allegedly molested by the police.
The rally is scheduled to start at 2.00 pm from Rabindra Sadan and is expected to reach Raj Bhawan, where the students will meet the governor, Kesharinath Tripathi. The governor has been proactive in the entire incident and called up the police commissioner on Friday to get his point of view.
Meanwhile, the state government has decided to dig their heels in the entire incident. While Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has dubbed the whole sequence of events a 'small incident', education minister Partha Chatterjee has urged the students to go back to their studies.
The students, though, are looking to ramp up pressure, buoyed by huge support from the society cutting across political affiliations. They have demanded that the vice chancellor resign, and have vowed to boycott classes until their demands are met. University teachers also largely support them. The head of the philosophy department, Soumitro Basu has resigned from his post citing 'moral compulsions'. This is deemed as a strategy to further put pressure on the vice chancellor.
On Friday, the students of Jadavpur University and other institutions took out a huge rally to march on Lalbazar, which is the police headquarters. They were stopped well before that, and tensions increased once again. Finally, a five-member team of students gave a memorandum to the police.
The challenge for the students is to keep the apolitical nature of the movement alive, something even the organisers of the movement have urged for on their Facebook page. Saturday's rally will be a good indicator of whether they are able to sustain the momentum and keep it away from being hijacked by political parties.
Also Read: Police crackdown on Jadavpur University: One mistake too many by Mamata Banerjee’s government?
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