Kolkata: Members of West Bengal University Karmachari Parishad held a gathering at Aurobindo Bhavan, the administrative building of Jadavpur University (JU), on Wednesday to celebrate the victory of BJP in the Assembly elections. The members said there was “a need to revive the education system in JU and root out anti-national activities from campus”. National Students’ Front (NSF), a right-wing students’ organisation, wrote to VC Chiranjib Bhattacharjee, demanding that Revolutionary Students’ Front (RSF) be banned from campus for promoting anti-national activities and that “Maoist and Naxalite students” be rusticated. “If they do not act, we will initiate a broader students’ protest,” said Somsurya Banerjee, NSF founding member.Around 50-60 people, including teachers, students and research scholars, participated in the event. Palas Maji, state general secretary of the Parishad, said, “We discussed restoring Bengal’s cultural heritage and the need to revive the education system that has reached a low point in the state. We also talked about JU and asked our people to mentally prepare themselves to eliminate the anti-national activities being carried out in the name of Naxalite and Maoist radical leftism.”Campus sources said they cannot remember a gathering of the staff body affiliated to BJP or RSS in recent memory. PM Narendra Modi had recently said that anti-national slogans were being written on the JU walls and students were protesting instead of studying. Nikhil Das, president of ABVP, JU unit, said they had submitted a letter to the VC alleging ABVP flags were torn near the UG Arts building and other places on campus.
