File photo of SRFTI campus unrest
Q: Why did the institute’s FIRs on the Sept 25 and Oct 4 incidents name nobody? I joined on Sept 25, then returned to Delhi to complete paperwork at my previous department. I was supposed to resume regular duties only after Oct 5 but rushed back to Kolkata on Sept 27 night. On Sept 30, my faculty colleagues and I met around 25 students and accepted every demand except one. The student body promised to return to classes immediately if we issued a press release, which we did on Oct 1. Q: Why issue a 24-hour campus vacation notice and parents’ emails during Durga Puja, causing panic?
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Q: Why call the situation “normal” in a press release despite students’ trauma after Sept 27? With the student union president assuring us classes would resume immediately, using “normal” seemed appropriate. SRFTI campus has been on the boil for the past month. Institute vice-chancellor Santosh Ajmera speaks to Priyanka Dasgupta about the situation and the road ahead. Q: No SRFTI VC has faced such protests. What went wrong? A: I cannot understand how students can form a negative opinion of a VC who joined just a month ago. My predecessor, not I, rented out the auditorium. CCTV cameras installed only in the administrative building—not classrooms or hostels—are being portrayed as surveillance of students. Outsiders offer coloured opinions without knowing the full story. I found discrepancies: former students sent on foreign exchange programmes meant for current, bona fide SRFTI students, and free overstays of around seven years for courses lasting three years. I fear some are prolonging protests to conceal wrongdoing. Q: Why rusticate six students when others protested too? A: The combined dean council recommended the six rustications for verbal abuse, manhandling and other misconduct. Students must comply with administrative decisions and orders; defiance cannot go unpunished. verbally abused and silenced by people seeking one-sided narratives rather than a factual reality check, I held several meetings during the initial period with larger groups of students and their union Although I was gheraoed. I remain available for dialogue, the only solution. Peaceful dissent is welcome, but proven misconduct is not. Who takes responsibility for provocative graffiti by a few individuals? Since I was absent when the unfortunate incident occurred, I could identify nobody and asked students to share details. Those who knew should have given the outsiders’ names to police. The FIRs were filed on available facts. We supplied police all relevant documents, including venue bookings. It expressed our hope and positivity that the situation would stabilise. Q: Why reject faculty advice for an academic halt immediately after the first week of violence? At the time, I believed students’ demands were genuine and could be addressed without an immediate academic halt. Restoring normalcy quickly matters to prevent further instigation and disruption of the campus equilibrium by external forces. One student attended class, giving me hope, but he too apparently felt intimidated and did not return. Q: What preventive measures were taken to avert a second incident? We alerted police about a possible protest outside SRFTI and issued a circular asking campus residents to avoid gatherings in public areas, particularly the main gate, and visits by outsiders. The warnings were ignored, escalating tensions. Compliance could have prevented confrontation. In hindsight, a few students appeared intent on escalation, gathering at the gate for sloganeering as an outside crowd assembled, making the situation unmanageable. Extraordinary circumstances require difficult decisions that must be understood in the correct perspective. Such administrative notices necessarily need to specify a timeframe. Compliant students left, but some, including those rusticated, refused to vacate. We used every available soft measure before considering harsher steps to restore campus normalcy. We continue appealing to students to return home. Download the TOI App.