Dalit scholar Rohith Vemulla's suicide: HCU acting VC says students ready to allow classes to resume

Hyderabad: After two weeks of protests over the suicide of a dalit scholar, student representatives of Hyderabad Central University (HCU) on Sunday expressed their readiness to allow classes and administrative work to resume normally from tomorrow.

The HCU's acting Vice Chancellor M Periasamy said the students who are agitating in the wake of suicide by Rohith Vemula had agreed to allow resumption of classes but conditionally even as Congress and BJP continued to trade exchanges over the incident. The varsity has been roiled by protests since Vemula's suicide on January 17.

The students, however, said a final decision would be taken at the meeting of the Joint Action Committee for Social Justice, which is spearheading the agitation.

"We had a meeting with student (JAC) representatives. They agreed to allow regular functioning from tomorrow. This is a conditional agreement," Periasamy told PTI.

"They wanted that some of the individuals involved in this punishment (suspension of Vemula and four others over alleged assault on an ABVP leader) should not be in the decision-making body or the administration, and all the SC/ST faculty members who have quit the administrative duties should resume their duties. We agreed to that," he said.

A JAC member said the students were not against the resumption of classes but they would take decision at a meeting of JAC.

The in-charge VC said he would request the SC/ST faculty members to take up their administrative duties once again.

As demanded by the JAC, some staff members would be taken off administrative duties, he added.

In a blistering attack on Congress, Union Minister M Venkaiah Naidu accused it of doing 'tamasha' politics over Vemula's suicide and asserted that the party never bothered about Dalits during its own rule.

"...It is long misrule and divisive agenda of Congress party and also vote-bank agenda of Congress that has spoilt the social harmony and that's why incident like Hyderabad (Central) University has happened," Naidu said addressing a public meeting here ahead of the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation elections.

"Rohith's is not the first incident (suicide)...10 (such suicides) incidents have happened during Congress regime.

Nobody had time. No Sonia, no Rahul and no Digvijay Singh. Nobody came to Hyderabad Central University. Nobody consoled nor condoled. Suddenly now they are doing drama," the Union Parliamentary Affairs minister alleged.

Keeping up the offensive on the suicide issue, Congress blamed Prime Minister Narendra Modi for failing to take any action against HRD Minister Smriti Irani and Labour Minister Bandaru Dattatreya.

Party's senior spokesman Anand Sharma regretted that the Prime Minister did not even refer to the issue in his 'Mann Ki Baat' radio programme despite the fact that the dalit scholar's death has sparked of agitation on university campuses in the country.

He alleged that the Prime Minister's "failure" to sack his colleagues showed that the sympathy he showed towards Rohith in a speech last week was just a "pretence".