DU’s Law Faculty cancels Prashant Bhushan talk at last minute, cites student unrest

Vivek Raj, a student and one of the organisers, said: “We had permission to hold the event in the seminar hall. We had been asking for the key since yesterday evening but we were refused. We told them that the room has been closed for the last two years because of the pandemic, so we need the keys to clean the room and get it in order. We then started a protest, after which the authorities called the police.”

“Yesterday during the ruckus, Deputy Proctor Gunjan Gupta told us that the decision was taken at the top to cancel the event. Today in the notice they are saying it’s because of our behaviour,” he alleged.

Asked for the reason behind cancellation, Gupta refused to comment, saying, “I’m not the right person. You should talk to the authorities.” Proctor Rajni Abbi, a former Delhi mayor from the BJP, said the topic or Bhushan himself was not the reason for cancellation. “Yesterday the students created a ruckus. They had an altercation with police and misbehaved with me… I don’t think in any reasonable manner we could have handed over the keys to them yesterday. If something untoward happened at night, if they got drunk, who would have been responsible? They created a huge problem in the library; they were banging doors. Because of this we decided to cancel. If students misbehave, they will not be allowed whether it is Prashant Bhushan or anyone else in the country,” she said.

Asked if such a last-minute decision was unfair to the speaker, Abbi said, “It is not fair to the speaker, but if some fight broke out at the event, who would have been responsible? The speaker, regardless of who it is, should also have thought that if permission was denied, should he have delivered the lecture there? He also did the wrong thing by standing on the road and delivering a lecture.”

Bhushan said authorities had informally told the organising students that the talk would not be permitted. “Soon after they publicised the talk, the university authorities at the top must have received some instruction from their political bosses saying how can you allow Prashant Bhushan to give a talk here… I went today because it was my duty and responsibility to meet the students and talk to them, since their permission had been cancelled without any good reason.”

“Today was a classic example that a speaker whose views are against this government will not be permitted to speak in this university,” he said.