Hyderabad protests – HRD Ministry says only followed procedure

Questions have been raised about the HRD ministry’s five letters, which have been blamed as one of the major reasons for the suicide of Rohith Vemula, a Dalit student, which has snowballed into a massive political row.

A video of Hyderabad Central University student Rohith Vemula, a 26 year old second year PHD student, who had committed suicide on Sunday evening, surfaced.

The death of Rohit Vemula, a Dalit research scholar in the University of Hyderabad, has landed Union Minister Bandaru Dattatreya in a thoroughly embarrassing situation. They also allege that Ms Irani’s ministry pushed for the students to be punished by sending five reminders to the university’s Vice Chancellor after another union minister Bandaru Dattatreya wrote to the Education Ministry demanding action against them.

He claimed that it was later decided that the punishment would be “mellowed down” in view of the background of the students as a semester suspension would have denied them the scholarship and would have virtually made impossible for them to continue their studies. She said action must also be taken against the HRD minister. From July the University stopped paying Rohith the monthly stipend of Rs 25,000 with students alleging that he was targeted for raising important issues under the banner of the Ambedkar Students Association that the Minister, in his intolerance, had dubbed anti-national. He took charge of his post on January 7.

Hundreds more protested at the university of Hyderabad, where police briefly detained eight students. Flanked by Thawar Chand Gehlot (minister for social justice), Vijay Sampla (minister of state for social justice) and Nirmala Sitharaman, (commerce minister) who hails from the state, Irani began by emphasizing her status as a “mother” who could empathize with the family of Rohith.

She alleged that the suicide note of Rohith, which was being circulated across the media, was not the authorized copy and read out a quote from the original letter in which no political organisation or politician was being held responsible for his fate. “A malicious attempt is being made to show it as a caste battle which it is not”, Smriti Irani, minister for Human Resource Development, told a press conference here as protests gathered against the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party’s alleged bias against lower castes. Why are students taking remorse to suicides? “A group of students allegedly attacked another student; we have ascertained that this is not a Dalit vs non-Dalit confrontation”, she said.