Situation peaceful at Aligarh Muslim University as student protests continue

The protest that took place on Thursday. Pic/PTI

The situation at Aligarh Muslim University remained peaceful today, days after protests rocked the campus over a portrait of Muhammad Ali Jinnah which hangs at the student union office.

The indefinite dharna and boycott of academic activities by students, however, continued for the third day today. Police on Wednesday resorted to lathicharge, lobbed teargas shells to disperse AMU students demanding the arrest of protesters who had barged into the campus, agitating over the portrait of the Pakistan founder.

Meanwhile, the president of Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University Students' Union, Geeta Kumari, today asked the RSS and different saffron groups to "stop interfering in the internal affairs" of different educational institutions in the country. Addressing the protesting AMU students at their dharna site, Geeta Kumari said, "The AMU and all other universities are autonomous institutions and we will not accept attacks by such organisations in the affairs of different educational institutions." She asked the saffron groups to stop taunting Muslims and repeatedly asking them to "go to Pakistan".

"India belongs to all and the RSS or any group does not have the right to appropriate the right and to dictate as to who will stay in India and who will not," she said.

Among other prominent visitors to the dharna site was parliamentarian Pappu Yadav. The leader from Bihar told the student protestors that the issue of police "lathicharge on AMU students on Wednesday will be taken up by opposition parties because what took place was not a lathicharge but a premeditated attack on unarmed protesters".

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