Kolkata: Men claiming to be members of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad stormed the campus of the Vidyasagar University in Medinipur of the Paschim Medinipur district in Bengal, vandalising the premises while chanting “Jai Shri Ram” on May 5.
The ABVP is the student wing of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. The organisation has claimed that it did not have anything to do with the incident.
The incident took place on the same week when the Bharatiya Janata Party won the Bengal elections and a day before its leader Suvendu Adhikari was sworn in as chief minister.
The portraits of two towering icons of the Bengal Renaissance, Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar and Rabindranath Tagore, which used to be displayed inside the closed students’ union office were reportedly pulled down and severely damaged. Campus staff whom this reporter spoke to said that the men who claimed to be ABVP workers also entered the offices of the Vice- Chancellor and reportedly pressured him to also chant “Jai Shri Ram”. They also allegedly issued threats that the university would have to function according to the ABVP’s “directions.”
Although the incident took place days earlier, news on it spread on the evening of May 11, triggering widespread outrage across Medinipur, the homeland of Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar, after whom the university is named.
The students’ union offices of the university – like universities and colleges across Bengal – have remained closed following directives issued by the Calcutta high court. The students union office at Vidyasagar University was no exception either.
Notably, the university had had no active unit of the ABVP, several members of staff told this reporter.
Among those who had stormed the university was an MBA student identified as Soumyadip Bera, who entered the campus claiming to be an ABVP student leader. He was allegedly accompanied by people who appeared to be outsiders to the staff who spoke to this reporter.
In a press statement on May 11, the ABVP’s South Bengal wing stated that the organisation in no way supports the “unfortunate incident involving the Vice-Chancellor of Vidyasagar University”. The statement says, “ABVP has always remained committed to peace and discipline in educational institutions, a democratic environment, and healthy student politics.”
“Since the announcement of the West Bengal election results on May 8, it has come to our notice that in various colleges and universities across the state, certain Trinamool-backed individuals have been attempting to create unrest by concealing their political identity and using the name of ABVP,” it said.
This story was originally published in thewire.in. Read the full story here.
