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Kolkata: Urging
students to demand police presence on campuses across all
universities, West Bengal Governor M.K. Narayanan Friday asked the
Presidency University students to stand up in the face of
vandalism and atrocities.
The governor, who visited the prestigious university two days
after it was vandalised, allegedly by activists of the Trinamool
Congress students wing, said a new set of laws and rules is
necessary to deal with "unprecedented" incidents in educational
establishments.
"Two things are necessary. The administration must do its best to
ensure it never happens again and I urge you students to stand
up...stand up... and never allow this to happen. Do not get sort
of pushed out on the backfoot as a result," he said.
"We need a new set of laws, a new set of instructions, mechanism
to deal with increasing instances of outsiders, criminals
intruding in places of education. There is a certain amount of
automatic response to situations of this kind to put in place a
mechanism," the governor said while addressing students and
teachers of Presidency University here Friday.
"We will try in consultation with the state government and the
authorities and the police to try and put in place. It may take a
little time but lets hope this will happen," he added.
The governor, who also is the chancellor of the university,
inspected the damage in the famous Baker's Building that was
ransacked by the attackers, who stormed the elite university
campus Wednesday and vandalised the premises and beat up students,
some of them women.
The vandalism was a part of a series of statewide retaliatory
attacks after Trinamool supremo and West Bengal Chief Minister
Mamata Banerjee and her Finance Minister Amit Mitra were Tuesday
heckled by a crowd including members of the Students Federation of
India, affiliated to opposition Communist Party of India-Marxist.
Hinting at the repercussions on the university's image and
reputation in the wake of the attack, Narayanan said: "If students
of Presidency University can be sort of treated in this manner,
then I think there is a reverberation for it to go far beyond the
university itself and city itself."
Narayanan also highlighted the tendency of university and college
administration to wait until the last minute for police help.
There is a tendency on the part of the college and the university
administration "to wait till almost the last minute and that gives
the hooligans a chance to do the things," he said.
He requested the students not to shy away from police protection
but instead initiate a movement to demand physical presence of
policemen on campus.
"I would like all the students saying that we want more policeman
on the campus. The major issue always has been that we don't want
police, we know how to handle it," said the former Indian Police
Service officer who earlier had a stint as the National Security
Adviser.
"I know 95 or 99 percent would like it, it's that one percent who
are interested in creating trouble," he said.
"I want a movement to start by which you demand that we need more
protection we need more policemen, we need more authority to be
given to the vice chancellors, the dean and others so that if
necessary they can handle the situation. We need the physical
presence of policemen because then, I can tell you, even the worse
policemen on the street is some kind of bulwark against some kind
of vandalism," he said.
Narayanan also stressed the requirement of foot policemen.
"One of the biggest problems that we are facing is the absence of
foot policemen, people who do the beats walking on the street. I
think will go a very long way," he said.
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