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Press Releases

09 October 2013

Just ahead of the JNUSU elections 2013-14, we see the AISA and DSF trading charges at each other for the failures of the Union led by them. The student community is faced with serious challenges ranging from the hostel crisis and inadequate MCM to the restoration of the JNUSU constitution and the fight for a more just and inclusive admission policy which includes the struggles to end discrimination in viva voce and to ensure adequate representation to backward minorities in the light of the Sachar Committee and Ranganath Mishra commission
reports. At the same time, AISA and DSF have been engaging in an ugly post-mortem of each other’s actions throughout the past one year. They have been claiming that the divided mandate delivered by the student community last year was the reason for the non-performance of the Union. This amounts to nothing but eyewash. Divided Mandate is Not an Excuse for Non-Performance The history of the JNUSU gives ample proof that divided mandates need not mean that student demands cannot be addressed effectively. In fact even when the mandate was divided between left organisations and right-wing organisations (such as in 1996-97 when SFI had the Presidents’ post while ABVP had a majority in the JNUSU
Council), the Left ensured that the fight for students rights was not in jeopardy. Whenever irreconcilable differences of opinion regarding a particular course of action in a struggle against the administration arose among the organisations leading the Union, such differences were settled through school-level general body meetings or University General Body Meetings, where students came to know clearly about the differences of opinion within the Union and a gave a clear mandate to the Union to fight against the administration without harming students unity. Significantly, it was in 2006, when the SFI-AISF had three office-bearers (Vice-President, General Secretary and Joint Secretary) and a majority in the Council while the AISA had the President’s post that the last successful MCM agitation was fought. The agitation was led by the office-bearers and councilors from SFI, and the participation of the JNUSU President from AISA was minimal. But this was not allowed to harm the struggling unity of the JNUSU, as differences of opinion were settled in the JNUSU council and the agitation was fought to a successful completion, with MCM being raised from Rs. 600 to Rs. 1500. Sectarianism within JNUSU The record of the previous union was so dismal precisely in this regard – the AISA and DSF fought each other regarding practically every issue concerning the students, to which the failed agitations of October 2012 and August 2013 stand testimony. As their recent pamphlets show, there was no united voice against the administration from the part of these  organisations on a number of important issues, ranging from viva voce weightage, BA/MA delinking, MCMs and so on. The JNUSU is an instrument of struggle for the student community
– it cannot be the battleground for the kind of petty and sectarian organisational interests as the AISA and DSF have ended up turning it into. The October 2012 agitation had brought out in the open the sectarian nature of the differences of opinion between the organisations leading the JNUSU. Instead of sincere attempts to preserve the struggling unity of the JNUSU,
what came out in the open was a fight between the leading organisations regarding competing demands and priorities, with the student community remaining largely in the dark. The office-bearers of the JNUSU quarreled among themselves in public in the midst of the agitation, thus diminishing the credibility of the Union at a crucial juncture, and thereby strengthening the hands of the administration. The recent agitation (August 2013) led by the JNUSU saw the dropping of many major demands of the October 2012 struggle which had remained unfulfilled, without informing the student community why all those demands were dropped. The Union’s admission that the JNUSU leadership was aware of the administration’s proposal to
increase MCM to Rs. 2000 from July 5th onwards only strengthened the impression among the student community that AISA and DSF had been deceitful in calling for an agitation on just one demand (about which crucial information was deliberately hidden from the student community while not calling for an agitation earlier) at the eleventh hour, before falling down to an abject surrender to the administration.  

Lessons from the Past and AISA's Record 

The abject surrender of AISA to the administration has been nothing new, and it is no wonder that not a single JNUSU office-bearer from AISA has ever been rusticated while fighting for students’ rights. The record of SFI and SFI-led Unions provide a stark contrast – the SFI unit secretary was in jail throughout the Emergency; rustications before and after the sine die of 1983 were directed against JNUSU office-bearers from SFI and the organisational leadership of SFI; in 1997-98 the move to rusticate JNUSU President Battilal Bairwa was defeated by the organised resistance by the students with a historic, 10-day hunger strike by Com. Vijoo Krishnan who was then the JNUSU Vice-President; the SFI unit secretary had been rusticated for six months following the struggle for Progressive Admission Policy in 1998-99. The deceit and surrender of the AISA-DSF-led Union is nothing but a reflection of the politics of the AISA and the DSF. It is the sectarianism of AISA which has of late been succumbing to the bourgeois parliamentarism creeping into their ranks on the one hand, and DSF’s petty bourgeois formulation of “autonomy” from the larger left and democratic forces in the country which amounts to stooping to a non-class position on the other, which has led to the weakening of the JNUSU vis-à-vis the administration (over hostels, MCM etc) as well as to its weak-kneed position vis-à-vis the State (with regard to the restoration of the JNUSU constitution, deprivation points for backward minorities etc.) The overwhelming anger of the student community over the absolute non-performance of the Union expressed in the annual GBMs and in election GBMs have exposed the efforts of the AISA-DSF to shift the agenda of this year’s elections to a devious shadow boxing between them and to the ruling class practice of attacking the organised left by spreading ill-informed rumours on various issues like the martyrdom of Com. Sudipto Gupta as well as the brutal murder of T P Chandrasekharan.
SFI appeals to the student community to participate in today’s UGBM in large numbers and to expose the antistudent record of the AISA-DSF combine.

Sd/-
Arjun Sengupta,
Convenor, Central Campaign Committee, SFI JNU Unit

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Press Releases

01 October 2013

The Central Executive committee of the Students’ Federation of India salutes the brave martyr Comrade Sajin Shahul, who succumbed today to injuries he sustained in an attack by RSS-ABVP goons in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala. Com. Sajin was a student of Government ITI, Dhanuvachapuram, Thiruvananthapuram, and was in the forefront of the fight against communal-fascist forces. The fatal attack occurred on 29 August, when RSS-ABVP thugs attacked his institute and threw bombs at SFI activists. Com. Sajin, who was only 18 years old, suffered serious head injuries and was on ventilator for a month until he passed away today in the morning.

Violent attacks by Sanghi goons are nothing new to our campuses; it was only one year ago – on 26th September 2012 – that another SFI activist, Com. Rohit, was brutally murdered by ABVP hooligans in Himachal Pradesh for having stopped them from harassing a girl student of his college. In Kerala, where the SFI has fought a determined and uncompromising battle against communalism in campuses, its activists have been the targets of Hindutva terrorists for a long time now. Thousands of SFI activists have bravely faced such attacks in various parts of the country, and many, like comrades Sajin and Rohit, have had to put their lives on the line in the course of this protracted struggle.

SFI dips its banner in honour of our valiant comrade and pledges to continue the fight to fulfill his unfinished tasks. The CEC of SFI appeals to the student community to rise up in protest against the dastardly murder of Com. Sajin, and calls for an All India Protest Day on 3 October 2013 (Thursday) to be observed all across the campuses and units of the country in militant solidarity with our struggle against communal-fascism.

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Press Releases

28 February 2013

The general budget has again proved to be full of rhetoric of inclusive growth while in terms of concrete outlay there is nothing that sets it apart from the anti-student and anti-people framework, which has become the feature of the current UPA government. While economic survey claimed that the impact of economic recession no longer exists, Finance Minister’s speech signaled that the impact is here to stay in the form of austerity measures and subsidy cuts. The excessive zeal to satisfy the foreign capital was clearly seen in the manner in which FDI and FIIs were shown as indispensable for country’s future. The hollow claim of building a sustainable future for the youth of the country hardly found any reflection in the actual budgetary allocation.

Finance Minister boasted of having increased the allocation to the Ministry of Human Resource Development by 17% over the RE of the current year, while the reality is that RE of the current year itself had seen a sharp cut amidst the austerity drive of the central government. Further, the total allocation of 79451 crore is a meager 4.77 % of the total budget expenditure, which is way short of the 10% mark.

Though Mr. Chidambaram claimed that the Right to Education is very much in place, the financial ambiguities continue to remain. The non-committal attitude of the central government continues to throttle a robust legislation such as RTE.

5.284 crore has been allocated for the scholarships to the students belonging to Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, other Backward classes and Minorities, and Girl children; which is even less than the budgetary allocation made last year. Chidambaram smartly tried to paint a rosy picture by showing comparisons with the RE of the current year.

The continuous hike in the price of cooking gas cylinders has adversely affected the mid-day meal schemes, as well the mess bills in the hostels. A cushion should have been provided in the budget to safeguard the pockets of the students. Further, no concrete outlays have been made for the women’s safety in the campuses.

Students of the country have to see the actual scheme of things behind this smoke screen of empty rhetoric and hollow claims. The adverse policy regime is going to impact the daily lives of the students across the country, and this budget will only worsen the situation. CEC calls all its units to protest against this anti-student budget and to further intervene in the daily lives of the students, channelizing their anger into movement against the current policy framework.

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Press Releases

19 February 2013

The 17-year long fight for justice by the victim of the Suryanelli gang rape case now stands at an important turning point. The horrendous incident of gang rape, in which a 16-year old schoolgirl from Suryanelli in Idukki district, Kerala, was duped by a friend, held captive, taken to several places and raped by several men over 42 days, had occurred in January-February 1996. The Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF) government of the day did not prosecute the case seriously because P J Kurien, a prominent Congress leader, was one of those named by the victim as the rapists.

When the Left Democratic Front (LDF) government assumed power in May 1996, it constituted a special court, the first of its kind, to try the case. In 2000, this trial court sentenced 35 of the accused to punishment. However, the UDF came to power in 2001 and in 2005, the High Court not only acquitted all but one of them, but also passed very objectionable comments about the victim and insisted that she had participated in consensual sex “because she was 3 months over the age of 16”.

Finally on 31 January 2013, the Supreme Court quashed the High Court order, saying it found the grounds on which the HC acquitted the accused shocking. The bail of the accused has been cancelled and the case has been referred back to the High Court for fresh hearing within 6 months.

P J Kurien, who is now a Congress MP and the Deputy Chairman of the Rajya Sabha, had been let off in the case on the grounds that the accused in the case had been acquitted. In other words, he got the benefit of the flawed 2005 judgement of the High Court when his petition not to be included as one of the accused was accepted by the High Court and Supreme Court in 2007. In the light of recent developments, the left democratic forces and women’s organisations have been demanding that the case be reinvestigated and that Kurien must step down from the post of Deputy Chairman of the Rajya Sabha. It would be most inappropriate and shameful if P J Kurien chairs Rajya Sabha sessions when the Parliament is all set to discuss legislation based on the J S Verma Committee report which has proposed wide ranging reforms in various fields to combat sexual violence against women.

SFI calls upon students and democratic sections of society to join a protest demonstration at Jantar Mantar, New Delhi on 21 February 2013, 11 am, demanding the resignation of P J Kurien from the post of Deputy Chairman of the Rajya Sabha and the implementation of the J S Verma Committee recommendations without dilution.