At least four FIRs were registered over the past 12 days following the death of a 17-year-old student inside the Jadavpur University campus in south Kolkata on August 10. These include a murder complaint. Two of the FIRs were filed by senior politicians of the ruling and opposition parties.

According to the Kolkata police records, the local thana gets at least half a dozen complaints from the university every year, which do not include the blockades and gheraos put up by the students. The complaints are generally about campus fights, molestation, etc.

The university that stood 10th in the engineering category of the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) 2023—just a notch below the nine IITs—is often hit by controversies. Despite holding the position of a centre of excellence since 2000 and being counted as one of the prestigious autonomous educational institutions of the country, JU has frequently been in the headlines for all the wrong reasons.

It is not just the recent incident of alleged ragging and death of a student. JU has been seen as controversy’s favourite child for decades. The academicians who taught there and the ones who graduated from the institution prefer to call this pattern “resistance with excellence”.

With extremely acclaimed alumni, a group of excellent faculty members, and a well-designed but old campus, the university often goes through rough patches while some incidents push it into the field of political bullfights. As and when JU comes to the fore, all parties try to claim their own pound of flesh, leaving academia in the lurch.

So what is ailing this prestigious university of West Bengal? Politics—politically motivated administration, politically driven acts and councils, politics-led indiscipline, say experts and senior academicians.

No election, only selection

Following an ordinance by the Mamata Banerjee government in 2019, it was decided that the vice chancellors would be eligible for appointment and re-appointment only after the approval of the state administration. Senior professors and academicians call this ordinance “a political tool to take control of universities”.

The West Bengal University Laws (Amendment) Ordinance, 2019, said, “The Vice-Chancellor shall hold office for a period of four years appointed as such in terms of the provisions and shall be eligible for reappointment for another term of four years subject to the satisfaction of the state government and on the basis of his past academic excellence and administrative success established during his term of office in the capacity of Vice-Chancellor, or till he attains the age of seventy years, whichever is earlier.”

In May this year, the state government promulgated the West Bengal University Laws (Amendment) Ordinance, 2023, to constitute a five-member search committee that will include a nominee of the chief minister.

According to the latest ordinance, “The search-cum-selection committee shall be constituted in the following manner:— (i) a nominee of the chancellor, who shall be the chairperson of the committee;(ii) a nominee of the chief minister; (iii) a nominee of the chairman, University Grants Commission; (iv) a nominee of the State Government; and (v) a nominee of the chairman, West Bengal State Council of Higher Education.”

Explaining the ordinance, state education minister Bratya Basu took to social media site X (formerly Twitter). He wrote, “The search committee will have a representative of the chief minister instead of the representative of the university’s court, governing board or senate…”

So, the government had done away with the existing provision of including a nominee from the university’s senate.

A senior JU professor, who held a position in the executive council (EC), said, “The university is suffering from administrative indiscipline. The ruling party’s action reeks of political bias. In the past decade, all ECs were made defunct, the basic eligibility criteria for the appointment of a VC were also changed. It is all about selection or nomination now; there is no election. The university campuses and their administration have become extremely undemocratic in nature.”

Blood on campus

The university has seen the murders of its VC and student. Gopal Chandra Sen, who became the vice chancellor in the late 1960s was shot dead in front of the library a day before his retirement.

It was a time of political unrest and the Naxal movement. The Jadavpur and Calcutta universities became hotbeds of politics, planning, and mobilisation.

It was December 1970. Naxal students asked Sen to cancel the examinations. Sen disagreed. On 30 December, Sen was walking back to his resident quarters. He was due to retire as V-C the next day. It was around 6 pm in the evening when he was killed. The murder was attributed to ‘Naxals’.

Historically and traditionally, Jadavpur University had been an educational institution where the students used to get an environment to mould their political-social-cultural ideas and ideologies. It has been a place that saw incidents of Naxal violence too during the 1970s.

Sen’s murder was an indication of the political rot that emboldens students to heckle, humiliate, and assault their professors, and anyone who disagreed with their views.

Extremism is not new here. Following the murder of Professor Sen, the VCs and registrars played an active role in regulating the campus discipline, though not affecting the students’ political allegiances and thought processes.

The university had VCs and registrars who would tour the campus to maintain discipline, rules, and regulations. It’s a practice that has stopped in the past six to seven years, said senior professors.

“The monitoring by the VC and registrar is gone now. There is hardly any elected representative in the administration. The authorities keep flouting the UGC norms every now and then to make the state government happy,” said another professor, who is part of the internal inquiry committee.

Partha Pratim Roy, a senior physicist and professor at JU, said, “Our university has fallen prey to the fight between the state and the central governments. They are using it as a political tool. The funds for the university’s maintenance have not come. Of the total Rs 60 crore expenditure related to maintenance, only Rs 20 crore was sanctioned. The projects funded by the state and Centre are also suffering.”

The anti-ragging committee is defunct, said Roy, who is also the secretary of the Jadavpur University Teachers’ Association (JUTA). “The campus does not have any administrative vigil and it is open for all.”

Dominance of student unions

The student politics here is mired in several controversies. The hostels are controlled by different unions and they have their own areas. JU has around eight hostels that can accommodate close to 2,000 students. The university has around 13,000 students in the current year. Of the eight hostels, six are located inside the campus while two are outside.

For getting hostel accommodation and to get included in the merit list, students at times have to depend on the unions, The largest department in JU is engineering. It is controlled by the Democratic Students’ Front (DSF). It has been controlling the engineering department for at least three decades now. The science wing is dominated by the union We The Independent (WTI). Arts is controlled by the SFI or Forum for Arts Students (FAS).

Apart from these unions, there are some smaller groups like Radical, AISA, etc. According to the students and professors News18 spoke with, some of them are aligned with the Naxal ideology.

Political branding

As per NIRF 2023, JU is ranked fourth among universities, 19th in research, 18th in pharmacy, 10th in engineering, and 13th overall. Despite achieving national ranks, the university is often branded politically. Senior politicians call it a “hub of Maoists”, “Leftist bastion”, etc. After the incident of the student’s death, chief minister Mamata Banerjee in a public programme said that the victim was “ragged and tortured” by the “Marxists and Leftists”, who have created an “environment of terror”.

JU is one of the very few educational institutions in the state where the ruling Trinamool Congress’s student wing is yet to make major inroads.

Between 1956 and 2019, Jadavpur University saw several students’ and teachers’ protests, which included demonstrations against the Left Front government-led Nandigram violence and the TMC administration’s decision to bar student elections on campus.