Allahabad University: New student union president declares a war against VC Hangloo

The newly elected president of the University of Allahabad has given an ultimatum to Vice-Chancellor Rattan Lal Hangloo to leave the campus as the student union wouldn’t let him sit in his chamber “even for a second”.

Previously a professor in the department of history, University of Hyderabad, Hangloo was serving as Vice-Chancellor of Kalyani University, West Bengal before he was sent to Allahabad University on in December 2015 apparently because of his proximity with the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh-Bharatiya Janata Party.

In his first speech after Saturday’s (October 6) swearing in ceremony, Uday Prakash Yadav of the Samajwadi Chhatra Sabha, who was elected president of the Allahabad University Student Union on Friday, declared: “The VC shouldn’t think even for a second to enter the campus. We are at war with him. This campus doesn’t belong to the ideology, which the VC subscribes and tries to impose on the university. Competence and nothing else would be allowed to flourish here.”

A large section of students have been blaming Hangloo for suppressing and harassing those teachers and students who don’t agree to the ideology of the RSS.

It is a tradition in the University that even the teachers can vote in the student union election. Many of them were present there at the union hall when Yadav was addressing the students. But when a teacher, standing on the dais, reminded Yadav to restran himself and shorten his speech, the new union president replied: “Guruji, now we will decide who speaks how long and who enters the campus.”

Of the five seats on which elections were held, the Samajwadi Chhatra Sabha (SCS) affiliated to Samajwadi Party candidates won the post of president and joint secretary. The National Student Union of India (NSUI) of the Congress was a surprise winner on the post of vice president and cultural secretary. The RSS-BJP’s Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarathi Parishad has won general secretary’s post. While the SCS had won four seats in 2017, the ABVP nominee had got general secretary’s chair. Despite being low-profile, the NSUI candidates won two seats.

The ABVP members had allegedly resorted to violence on Friday night after losing elections. They had set on fire the hostel rooms of the winners.

The police have booked Atendra Singh, the ABVP candidate for the post of union president who lost and 19 members of the organisation for the incendiary attacks on the winners and the policemen, who were on duty at the union hall. While 15 of them including Singh are absconding, the police have arrested four.