Stood By Students Against Police Action During Anti-CAA Protests: Jamia VC Akhtar

Jamia VC Najma Akhtar said that she also wrote to the centre seeking its intervention and demanding restriction on police entry into the campus without consent from the varsity administration.

The outgoing vice chancellor of Jamia Millia Islamia (JMI) University, Najma Akhtar said on Wednesday that she stood with the students of the varsity during the Anti-CAA protests to ensure that the students get justice. Professor Najma Akhtar, whose tenure as the vice chancellor of JMI ends next week, said in an interview to PTI, that she had written to the centre seeking its intervention into the matter, and demanded that police should not be allowed to enter inside the campus premises without the consent of the university administration. 

Professor Akhtar was appointed as the vice chancellor of Jamia Millia Islamia university in 2019, the very same year which witnessed anti-CAA protests in December. “Do you think a vice-chancellor has any other option but to support its students? If you don’t support them, who else will you support then?” Akhtar was reported as saying by news agency PTI. Notably, Professor Najma Akhtar also holds the distinction of being the first woman VC of Jamia Millia Islamia university, and probably the first woman VC of any central university in India. 

“I was very much on the side of my students. If they were beaten up in a wrong way by police, I was against that. But we didn’t stage a demonstration or make hue and cry about it. I wrote to my (education) ministry, saying you have to see that my students get justice and no further entering of police happens inside the campus without our permission,” the Padmashree recipient was further reported as saying. “Such a thing should not have happened at that time”. “I or my Proctor would have gone with the students (to the ministry), if they had asked,” she said further. 

Following the eruption of the anti-CAA protest, Jamia Millia became the epicentre of the protests after the police barged into the university library and allegedly attacked students on December 15, 2019. However, the police said that they ventured inside the varsity campus looking for outsiders involved in violence during the protests. 

On steps taken by the Jamia Millia administration to keep such incidents at bay, Professor Akhtar said, “These are unusual things. So, if unusual things come, we have to be ready with unusual solutions.” On the university’s measures to cope up with the Covid-19 pandemic, she said that she managed to keep students safe and ensured that they reach their homes safely without catching the virus.

“As a vice-chancellor taking care of 25,000 students was a difficult task. But we managed to keep students who were in hostels safe and got them vaccinated,” she was further reported as saying.” “When things cleared up a little bit, we hired buses to send students to their homes with our own food and security, even up to Kashmir and Bihar. This was done safely with the support from the government. We are very proud of this successful operation,” she added.

(With inputs from PTI)

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