JNU admission row: Students vacate administrative block but refuse to end protest

NEW DELHI: Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) students are not willing to climb down on protests but vacated the administrative block on Friday after having occupied it for two days.

However, the students continued their strike against the new attendance rule, as per which they would be forfeited of their hostel accommodation and scholarship/fellowship in case they do not achieve 75 per cent attendance.

Moving away from the block, students said that they were not doing anything illegal. "We are not in the admin block anymore. There was no siege as such. It's all a lie. But we are continuing with the strike," Simone Zoya Khan, JNU Students' Union (JNUSU) Vice President said.

Vice Chancellor M. Jagadesh Kumar had called the students gathering at the campus a "siege" and also accused the students of manhandling an official. "Taking the university to ransom by JNUSU led students and confining the top officials in admin building since morning is highly condemnable. Let us raise our voice against such unwelcome behaviour. You can see the pictures to realise how they are bent upon creating unrest in JNU," he had tweeted on Thursday.

He had also said that the protest was illegal and was against both -- the University and the High Court order.

As per the Delhi High Court's order last year, students cannot hold demonstrations within a 100-metre periphery of the University's administrative block.

The JNU had on Friday moved the Delhi High Court claiming that its order asking students not to protest within 100 metres of the administrative block was being violated. The university had filed a plea seeking contempt action against the students who allegedly violated the court order. 

Students on Thursday 'gheraoed' the administration block demanding a meeting with the vice-chancellor on the issue of compulsory attendance and had stopped the rectors from leaving the building.