New Delhi, Feb. 28: The youth wings of 11 Left and "secular" parties today jointly demanded the dropping of sedition charges against JNU students and the removal of Union ministers Smriti Irani and Bandaru Dattatreya over the Rohith Vemula suicide controversy.
They launched a forum, Youth Against Communalism, vowing to combat the alleged assault on universities by the Sangh parivar and the NDA government.
Six JNU students have been charged with sedition in connection with a campus event where allegedly "anti-national" slogans were chanted. Irani and Dattatreya are accused of driving Rohith, a Dalit PhD scholar, to suicide by getting the University of Hyderabad to suspend him over an alleged attack on an ABVP student.
Among the protesting organisations today were the youth wings of the CPM, CPI, Rashtriya Janata Dal and the Janata Dal United.
They held a news conference where CPM Lok Sabha member M.B. Rajesh accused Irani, the human resource development minister, of misleading Parliament on the events surrounding Rohith's January 17 suicide.
"We demand strong action against those responsible for pushing Rohith to commit suicide. We demand the removal of Irani and Dattatreya from office," Rajesh told his audience.
He said the videos the police had furnished to back the sedition charges against the JNU students had been found to have been doctored.
"There is no credible evidence against these students. The sedition charges must be dropped," the MP said.
The forum will visit higher educational institutions to spread awareness about the NDA government's alleged interference in institutions, Rajesh added.
Several student organisations held a separate news conference and criticised Irani's claim in Parliament that an internal JNU committee had in an interim report found the students prima facie "guilty".
These organisations included the student arms of the CPIML Liberation, CPI, CPM and the Congress as well as another Leftist student body, the Krantikari Yuva Sangathan.
They said a "protest day" would be observed across the country on March 2, and a march to Parliament held the same day.
On March 18, students and youth from across the country will hold a march in the capital as part of a "Delhi chalo" programme.
IIT divide
A group of 60 IIT Bombay teachers has written to President Pranab Mukherjee that JNU and some other institutions of higher learning have become a "safe haven" for activities that are not in the nation's interests, a PTI report said.
The teachers have urged Mukherjee to advise students against becoming "victims of the ideological warfare" on campuses.
Another group of teachers from the same institute had on February 20 issued a statement supporting the agitating JNU students and saying the State should not dictate the meaning of "nationalism".
A group of IIT Madras teachers too had recently written to the President on the JNU controversy, condemning the "anti-national" sloganeering on the campus.
In their letter to the President, the 60 IIT Bombay teachers have said the JNU row "undermines" the national interest and suggests that certain groups are trying to "make use" of the students to create an environment of "abuse and acrimony".
"Besides JNU, we note that certain other institutes of higher learning are also treated as safe haven for activities that are not in national interests," the letter says.
"Some of the brilliant young minds, instead of engaging themselves in activities that would provide a healthy atmosphere for the educational institutions to become academically highly productive, involve themselves under the pretext of freedom of expression in activities that vitiate the academic atmosphere.
