Hyderabad, Jan 30: For the first time after more than a week of turmoil over the suicide of Dalit scholar Rohith Vemula, academic activities have resumed in the Hyderabad Central University even as protests by students in support of their demands, continued.
Academic and administrative activities had come to a stand-still in HCU from January 18, a day after Rohith’s suicide, with agitating students spearheading protests seeking justice for him.
All the departments, schools and centres were open on Friday and classes were conducted in some of the departments. Research laboratoryies were also open.
Joining the ongoing stir by agitating students, the SC/ST Employees Welfare Association of the Hyderabad Central University (HCU) Friday organised a ‘protest day’ and the ‘SC/ST Teachers Forum and Concerned Teachers’ continued their relay hunger strike, which they had started on Thursday.
The members of the Forum have written to President Pranab Mukherjee, visitor of the university, regarding their demand for removal of Vice Chancellor Appa Rao Podile, who has gone on indefinite leave, and seeking that acting VC Vipin Srivastava should step down from the post, a representative of the Joint Action Committee for Social Justice said.
The letter was signed by 93 “concerned teachers”.
Recalling that Srivastava was allegedly involved in the suicide of a student Senthil Kumar in 2008, a Forum spokesperson claimed that the interim Vice Chancellor did not get a clean chit in the issue.
