New Delhi, May 27: The Supreme Court today said the campus was no place for satyagraha or protests of any kind.

“How can an educational institution run if you organise satyagraha and carry placards? You are not Mahatma Gandhi,” a two-judge bench said, throwing out an appeal filed by Indulekha Joseph, a Kerala student expelled from her college.

Indulekha, pursuing a three-year degree course in English at St George’s college, Aruvithur, was expelled for sitting on a satyagraha on the campus to draw attention to alleged irregularities in the institution’s management.

The high court had upheld the Kottayam college’s decision to rusticate her.

Although Indulekha’s lawyer, Saji Thomas, tried to plead for leniency and apologised unconditionally for her behaviour, the apex court refused to overturn her expulsion.

“You can give all kinds of apology. It doesn’t matter. You can stab someone, then say sorry or shoot down someone and say sorry. Are you a student or what? How can an educational institution run if you indulge in such practices?” the bench of Justices Markandeya Katju and Deepak Verma said.

Her counsel’s plea that Indulekha was suffering from an incurable disease and was in need of a kidney transplant also did not invoke any sympathy from the court.

The court had earlier directed the college to allow her to sit for her third semester exam while it heard the case.

Indulekha had appealed to the Supreme Court on December 2, 2008, against the high court order that said though her satyagraha had not obstructed classes or other college activity, it amounted to misconduct.

On February 13, 2007, the last day of classes of her first year, she held a placard saying “Stop Harassment, Celebrate College Day” and read a book silently in the verandah of the office building, away from the classrooms.

She was protesting the principal’s decision not to hold the College Day and “constant harassment” by the principal, who she said had a long-standing enmity with her father, a lecturer in the same college.

The principal, a priest, allegedly did not get along with her father because he had written a book criticising the Syrian Catholic Church.

Indulekha alleged that the principal had constantly sidelined her from college union events, though she was the elected vice-chairperson, and had even called off the College Day celebrations over her involvement.

The day she held the satyagraha, an inquiry was ordered into her “grave indisciplinary behaviour” and she was suspended. The inquiry committee concluded that her “dharna” amounted to indiscipline. Indulekha had created tension, tarnished the name of the college and obstructed its smooth functioning, it said. She had also distributed leaflets among students.

A three-member Board for Adjudication of Student’s Grievances, to which she appealed, did not find merit in her claim and expelled her.

She was dismissed under the Mahatma Gandhi University rules that prohibit political activity on campus.

Indulekha appealed to the high court, saying her conduct was neither political nor wilfully mischievous and pointing out that she did not obstruct classes or administrative work at the principal’s office. But the court rejected her plea.

In her appeal to the Supreme Court, Indulekha said she was an above average student despite suffering from an incurable auto-immune disease, lupus erythematosus.

She claimed that her protest was not a dharna, which is punishable under the college rules. The rules do not mention satyagraha and only prohibit political activities on campus involving the ideologies of parties recognised by the Election Commission, she said.