JNU students to continue strike today

NEW DELHI: Students of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) will continue with their strike on Friday, the third consecutive day, against a UGC notification. The notification of May 5, 2016, was implemented by the university in the Academic Council meeting on December 26. It lead to seat cuts in researched-based courses in some sought-after schools.
“The VC lied to the media by saying there will be no seat cuts and that students will be given deprivation point,” said Satarupa Chakraborty, JNUSU general secretary.However, the administration in a statement has challenged the opinions of “a few students” and termed them “misleading”. The administration said that there are less seats this year “because of the need to implement the 2016 UGC notification without any deviation,” the statement said.
The administration said that since the UGC notification is mandatory, “readjustment of number of seats in MPhil and PhD is imperative,” and that “the current strength of research scholars is much higher than required”.
In their statement, the administration pointed out that even with the 200 current available seats is still a large number, and that the university has advertised about 300 faculty positions this year and “after recruitment of these faculty positions, number of seats in coming year for research scholars will substantially increase,” they claim.
Students, however, are unhappy with the explanation.