Kolkata: The Calcutta High Court on Friday directed the Bengal government to remove the agitating students from the front of the on-campus residence of Visva Bharati Vice Chancellor Bidyut Chakraborty. The court directed the Birbhum police to execute the order by 3 pm.
The interim order was passed in the wake of a petition moved by the Visva Bharati authorities seeking the court’s intervention in clearing the impasse created by a students’ gherao of the vice chancellor against expulsion of three students on disciplinary grounds.
The order, passed by the Bench of Justice Rajsekhar Mantha, prohibited the agitating students from conducting protest demonstration, putting up banners, posters, hoardings or using loudspeakers within 25 metres of the V-C’s residence or the Central Administrative Building of the university.
The protestors may, however, demonstrate peacefully outside 50 metres of those premises, the order stated. “This is supposed to be a students’ protest, not a trade union agitation,” the judge observed during the course of hearing on Friday.
The court also directed the officer in charge of the Santiniketan Police Station to remove all locks which have been put up at the sites where the protests are currently being held.
The judge also ordered deployment of three police constables to provide round-the-clock security to professor Chakraborty. A report on execution of the order has also been sought for from the thana.
The court observed that it would continue to hear the matter, including the submissions of the agitating students, but only after the impasse is removed.
A section of students has gheraoed the vice chancellor’s home since the night of August 27 and forced him to remain confined inside, demanding the withdrawal of the rustication order of Somnath Sow, Falguni Pan and Rupa Chakraborty. The three students were expelled from the institution on August 23 for “disrupting the academic atmosphere” following their protests against alleged bids to saffronise the varsity.
Varsity authorities also alleged that the agitating students locked the front gate of the central office and tried to enter the V-C’s residence by climbing over the gate.
The counsel for the agitating students, however, submitted in court that the lock at the V-C’s residence was put there by the institution authorities.
The matter would now come up for hearing on September 7.
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