New Delhi: Former student leaders from minority universities on Thursday questioned the recent furore over Muhammad Ali Jinnah's portrait in Aligarh Muslim University, seeing in it a ploy to rob AMU and the Jamia Millia Islamia of their minority status.

They said they would approach the President, in his capacity as Visitor to these varsities, and voice their concerns.

Bashir Ahmad Khan, former Ignou pro-vice-chancellor and one-time president of the AMU students' union, cited how radical Hindu groups had stormed the AMU campus on May 2 to try and remove the portrait.

"If action is not taken against the hooligans, it will prove there is a nefarious design to malign minority universities and abolish their minority character. We will not tolerate it and adopt all peaceful and democratic means to foil the designs of the communal forces," he told reporters at the Press Club of India.

This week in Delhi, Sangh parivar activists chanted slogans against Jinnah and Muslims outside Jamia.

In 2016, the Centre had withdrawn an appeal in the Supreme Court against an Allahabad High Court verdict of 2006 that said AMU was not a minority institution. In March this year, the Centre filed an affidavit before Delhi High Court opposing Jamia's minority status. Both cases are still being heard.

Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath, Union minister V.K. Singh and other BJP leaders have spoken out against Jinnah's portrait at AMU.