Mumbai University senate members detained for protesting ‘undemocratic’ meet

MUMBAI: The city police on Tuesday morning detained around 20 current and former members of the University of Mumbai (MU) senate who were protesting against the varsity administration cutting short the senate’s annual budget meeting and preventing discussion on various issues.

The agitators, who belonged to the Bombay University and College Teachers Union (BUCTU) and Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena’s youth wing Yuva Sena, had gathered at the entrance of MU’s Fort campus, where a varsity management council meeting was in session. The demonstration was soon disrupted, and the protesters were taken to the Azad Maidan police station.

After the two organisations, which represent the university teachers and registered graduates respectively, had announced the sit-in, the Azad Maidan Police, late on Monday night, had issued a prohibitive notice to the organisers, threatening them with legal action in the event of any law and order issue. The senate members have termed the use of police force in curbing the protest an “oppressive” move by the MU administration.

The elected members have intensified their opposition to how the university officials conducted the senate session on March 22, and the management council meeting preceding it. The faculty and alumni representatives had stormed the well of the senate house and staged a walkout to condemn the procedural lapses in the budget approval process at the management council. However, the university administration went on to present the budget document and got it approved through the nominated members as well as the principal and college management representatives.

Yuva Sena later filed a plea against the draft budget’s passage.

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Mumbai University senate

The senate, the university’s top statutory body, has begun functioning with all the elected members for the first time in the last three years, due to the delayed polls for the registered graduate constituency. The elected members, who had already been targeting the university administration and the state’s BJP-led ruling coalition for dragging their feet on the senate elections, have now accused the university of curtailing deliberations on the senate floor.

“Using its brute majority, the university administration wrapped up the budget session, which typically lasts at least two days every year, in just half a day. The meeting was held in the most undemocratic manner by violating several statutes. Ignoring the protest of the senate members (graduates and teachers) on the floor of the senate, the university authority continued with the meeting. Thus, the elected representatives of teachers and graduates lost their democratic right to take up several issues concerning students, teachers and non-teaching staff,” reads a letter by the BUCTU and Yuva Sena members to MU vice chancellor Ravindra Kulkarni.

The action against the protesting teachers and alumni follows a university directive, issued in September last year, that forbids any meeting, agitation, strike or protest march on campus without administrative approval. While Tuesday’s management council meeting and the sit-in were to take place at MU’s Kalina campus, the university, at the eleventh hour, shifted the meeting’s venue to Fort in South Mumbai, where the Bombay High Court (HC) has prohibited protest gatherings except at certain designated spots. End blurb

The three elected members of the management council from Yuva Sena and BUCTU submitted a dissenting note at Tuesday’s meeting, condemning the varsity barring senate members from entering the campus. They also demanded that the senate meeting be held again.

Earlier, the Bombay High Court (HC) had refused to grant immediate relief in the petition against the budget approval process by council members. In their plea, they have alleged that the agenda for the March 12 management council meeting did not explicitly mention budget approval. They also claimed that the meeting notice was served only on the preceding evening, leaving them little time to prepare.