Education minister Bratya Basu said on Wednesday that it was not clear to him why the authorities of South Calcutta Law College, where the 24-year-old woman student was allegedly gang-raped on June 25, decided to close the college.
The minister said this to reporters in the Assembly a day after the governing body of the college said the institute would not open for classes now.
“I don’t know why the college authorities decided to keep the campus closed. The classes should continue in the college as usual. I am hopeful that normalcy on the campus will be restored soon,” Basu said.
A fact-finding team from Calcutta University that visited the college on Wednesday asked vice-principal Nayna Chatterji about the decision to keep the campus closed indefinitely.
“We told the vice-principal to take steps so the form-filling exercise of the students could be completed. She also has to ensure that the students scheduled to write the examination on July 16 get the admit cards. We have told her that she can think of using the Hazra Law College campus to complete the formalities,” a member of the CU team told The Telegraph.
He said vice-principal Chatterji also has been told to inform the students about how long the campus would remain shut.
“The students cannot be kept in the dark. They are worried about their future and are suffering for no fault of their own,” the member said.
The college had made a post on its website on Sunday, stating that classes would remain suspended and the campus closed for students until further notice, as desired by the governing body, the highest decision-making body of the college.
The vice-principal did not say anything after she stepped out of the college after meeting the members of the fact-finding team at noon on Wednesday.
Calls and text messages to Chatterji from The Telegraph went unanswered on Wednesday.
Ashok Deb, the Trinamool Congress MLA from Budge Budge, who is the president of the governing body, also did not respond to text messages and calls from The Telegraph on Wednesday.
Haripada Banik, a member of the governing body and a teacher of the college, however, wondered how the classes could be held when the police were restricting access to the campus.
“On Wednesday, the fact-finding team asked us to come to the college so they could meet us. But the police officers standing guard outside the campus told us that only the vice-principal and the five members of the visiting team from CU would be allowed to go inside the college. The meeting between the team and the vice-principal was held on the ground floor, which faces the students’ union room that has been sealed by the police. The entry to the vice-principal’s office on the first floor of the college has been blocked as well,” Banik told The Telegraph.
The teachers who had come left without being able to meet the CU team.
A senior officer of Lalbazar, the police headquarters, said they were not restricting access to the campus.
When told that the teachers were not allowed to go into the college by the police, he said: “We have to check this before commenting.”
Students worry
Many of the students The Telegraph spoke to said they were disappointed with the college administration’s decision to keep the campus closed since Monday until further notice.
A first-year student who will write the exams from July 16 said they did not know how the form-filling would be completed, and how they would get the admit card.
“The form filling up of some of the students has remained pending. Besides, we are supposed to collect the admit cards before the start of the examination on July 16. How will those exercises be completed if the college remains closed?” said a second-year student.
Many of the fourth-year students who came to the college on Tuesday said they did not know how they would submit their projects on July 9 and 10 if the college was not open.