Bengal Governor made party in Trinamool's PIL on JU fresher's death

West Bengal Governor C.V. Ananda Bose has been made a party in the public interest litigation (PIL) filed by the Trinamool Congress in the Calcutta High Court over the mysterious death of a fresher at Kolkata’s Jadavpur University (JU).

The first year student of Bengali honours died under mysterious circumstances after falling from the balcony of a students’ hostel on August 10. It is suspected that he became a victim of ragging.

The Governor has been made a party in the PIL since by virtue of his chair, he is the Chancellor of Jadavpur University. Also, since Jadavpur University is currently running without a permanent Vice Chancellor, the overall responsibility of the affairs of the state university rests with the Chancellor.

The matter is slated to come up for hearing at the division bench of Calcutta High Court’s Chief Justice T.S. Sivagnanam and Justice Hiranmay Bhattacharya.

In the PIL, the counsel for the petitioner and Trinamool MP Kalyan Bandopadhyay made an appeal for making the Governor a party, which the high court cleared on Friday.

The PIL also termed the university campus as the hub for consuming narcotics and other intoxicating substances without any restriction on the entry of outsiders.

Bandopadhyay has alleged that because of the approach of the Governor, JU is operating without any permanent VC for quite some time now.

This is the second PIL filed at the Calcutta High Court in the matter of the death of the JU fresher.

On August 14, Calcutta High Court counsel Sayan Banerjee had filed a similar PIL seeking the intervention of the court in ensuring that anti-ragging guidelines of the University Grants Commission (UGC) are strictly implemented in all state-run universities in West Bengal, including JU.