30 December 2016

The Vice Chancellor

JNU
Dear Professor Jagadesh Kumar,
We write to express our concern and anguish at the manner in which the 142nd meeting (26
December 2016) of the Academic Council was conducted and the manner in which it has been
represented in the official statement of the JNU administration to the media.
You have been following a practice of soliciting everyones views when there is a clear
difference of opinion. This was not followed on 26 December, and many members were not
given an opportunity to speak on Item One of the AC Meeting Agenda, that is, the Minutes of the
previous, 141st AC. Subsequently, other items were read out amidst protest, and deemed to have
been passed without any discussion, which is not correct. Most of this could not even be heard
by the members present. Reading out agenda items without giving chance to the members to
express their opinion cannot be considered as an approval.
We maintain that there are mistakes in recording the Minutes of the last AC meeting. As you are
aware, many corrections had to be made in the Minutes of the previous AC meeting that had
been circulated and a number of written and oral representations had been made to you that these
should be corrected. We also maintain that due procedure was not followed in dealing with the
report of the Standing Committee on Admissions.
We would like to remind you that during discussion on Part A, the decision had been taken to
approach the UGC to seek clarification on some points in the new M. Phil UGC Notification,
hence the supposed adoption of May 2016 UGC Notification in Part B is contradictory.
We believe that peaceful and democratic functioning, which has been the tradition of the
University, requires that all members are allowed to express their opinion and decisions are taken
after due process of discussion and consultation, and by majority vote if required. There are
many important issues, e.g. the May 2016 UGC notification, which need to be discussed and
difficult issues be resolved for the proper functioning of the University.
We feel that JNUs inclusive admission policy, developed over the years, aimed at providing
representation to students coming from marginalized sections, especially the Dalits, OBCs and
women, will be adversely affected by the new scheme proposed by the UGC. We also
understand that JNU could make necessary changes in the earlier notification according to our
needs. Therefore, we suggest that the notification should be sent to all the Schools/Centres to
seek their opinion and the 142nd AC meeting should be reconvened as soon as possible to take a
well considered position.

Information about the shortcomings in procedure and wrong reporting of the Academic Council
proceedings has been circulated to members who could not be present. These have added their
signatures to urge the reconvening of the Academic Council in order to ensure proper procedures
and discussion take place.
Members of the Academic Council
1. CP Chandrasekhar
2. Bishnupriya Dutt/Ranjani Mazumdar
3. Nivedita Menon
4. Lata Singh
5. B. S. Butola
6. Monidipa Sen
7. Rajat Datta
8. Jayati Ghosh
9. Praveen K Jha/Vikas Rawal
10. Riddhi Shah
11. Amir Ali
12. Ajith Kanna/Dhir Sarangi
13. Ameet Parameswaran
14. Pradeep K Shinde
15. Hemant Adlakha
16. Anupama Roy
17. Ritoo Jerath
18. Ramila Bisht/Vikas Bajpai
19. Ajoy Kumar Karnati
20. Satya Brata Das
21. Ajay Kumar
22. Rekha V. Rajan
23. H.S. Shiva Prakash
24. Ravi Vasudevan
25. Pratiksha Baxi
26. Manindra Nath Thakur
27. Swati Tiwari
28. J M Moosa
29. Raman Sinha
30. Meeta Narain
31. Sanjay Kumar Pandey
32. Saumen Chattopadhyay
33. Arvind Kumar Mishra
34. Charanjit Singh