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| Students of Jogamaya Devi College and some outsiders attack the taxi in which principal Gargi Nath was leaving for hospital after being assaulted earlier on Friday. (Pradip Sanyal) |
Students debarred from writing the Part I undergraduate examinations because of inadequate attendance or low marks in selection tests assaulted their principal on Friday afternoon.
Around 40 students of Jogamaya Devi College and some “outsiders” attacked principal Gargi Nath after the governing body endorsed the decision taken by the management to debar 95 names. A group of parents allegedly egged them on.
“I had just stepped into a taxi in front of the college around 12.15pm when they dragged me out and demanded that I revoke the decision. When I refused, they abused me and started pushing and punching. Someone pulled my hair and another tore my sari,” Nath told Metro.
The principal retreated to her office after the assault and did not come out until 3pm, under police escort. The presence of police personnel, however, did not prevent the students and outsiders from charging at her for the second time.
“Fortunately, she managed to get into the taxi and head straight to a hospital for a check-up,” a colleague said.
The students later resorted to a blockade on SP Mukherjee Road, forcing traffic diversions at the Hazra and Bhowanipore intersections.
Rathin Mukherjee, the father of a first-year English honours student who has been barred, claimed that attendance was being wrongly calculated. “My daughter had 70 per cent attendance till November. We have no idea how it dropped after that. She hasn’t been shown the records.”
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| Principal Nath being escorted out of college |
Dhrubojyoti Chattopadhyay, the pro vice-chancellor of Calcutta University, stood by the college. “It is shameful that students miss classes regularly and then create trouble when denied permission to write examinations,” he said.
The college management has suspended classes and lodged an FIR with Bhowanipore police station.
Jogamaya Devi College is not the only institution facing unrest for barring irregular students from examinations. First-year students of Muralidhar Girls’ College had gheraoed their principal from morning till late in the night on Tuesday over the same issue.
At City College, 295 students were allowed to sit for Part I after they laid siege to the principal’s office for over 24 hours last weekend.
“Low attendance has always been a problem in colleges. It is just that the authorities have become stricter,” said a teacher.
The All Bengal Principals’ Council will hold a demonstration in front of Asutosh College at 10am on Saturday to protest the assault by students on Nath.