Indian
Express: Lucknow: Wednesday, 01 October 2014.
A sections of
students led a protest and allegedly manhandled some officials at Aligarh
Muslim University Monday after the vice-chancellor accepted the resignation of
Registrar Shahrukh Shamshad who two hours later tried to retract it claiming
that he had been “forced to resign under duress”.
The
resignation comes weeks after the office of the Vice-President of India asked
Union Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) to look into the complaints
of alleged manipulations in the appointment of Shamshad’s appointment as
Registrar.
Vice-Chancellor
Lt Gen (Retd) Zameeruddin Shah, refused Shamshad’s request for retraction of
the resignation letter.
“The
Registrar had tendered his resignation on “health grounds” at 9:30 am and the
same was accepted by the Vice-Chancellor at 10 am. Later, the Registrar sent an
email at 11:26 am alleging he had resigned under duress. But once a resignation
is promulgated, it cannot be retracted,” University spokesperson Dr Rahat Abrar
said.
He said
Shamshad’s allegations were baseless and the “V-C has not allowed him to
retract the resignation”.
Dr Afsar Ali
Khan, an assistant professor in the electrical engineering department, has been
appointed as the officiating Registrar until the selection of a new Registrar.
Questioning
the manner in which the Registrar was “removed”, some students later protested
outside the V-C office, allegedly manhandling the officials accompanying Shah.
“About 250-300 of us had gone to the V-C to inquire about the condemnable
circumstances under which the Registrar was forced to resign. He did meet us
but did not give any satisfactory answer,” said student leader Kunwar Mohammad
Ahmad, from second year MA (Political Science). He, however, claimed that the
students did not misbehave with the staff.
Expressing
“surprise” over the protests, Abrar said that the matter does not concern the
students.
Notably,
taking cognizance of a representation by former AMU student union president
Shahzad Alam ‘Barni’, the under-secretary to Vice-President Hamid Ansari, Mahitab
Singh, had sent a representation to MHRD urging “appropriate action,” with
regards to the complaints in the appointment of the Registrar.
Using special
powers, the V-C had appointed Shamshad as Registrar on ad-hoc basis on May 17,
2012. The post was advertised a month later on June 16, 2012. But, Alam had
alleged that as per an RTI reply, instead of 45 days given to respond to the
advertisement, it was extended to two months as Shamshad did not meet the
mandatory criteria of having a Master’s degree and was waiting for his
“fake”degree to arrive. The Registrar had said that he did extend the date of
responding against the advertisement as he was waiting for his degree to arrive
but maintained that it was genuine.
RTI replies
further showed that Shamshad received his Master’s degree from the
controversial Eastern Institute for Integrated Learning in Management (EIILM),
Sikkim, on August 27, 2012, which was after his appointment as Registrar. Last
year, the V-C and registrar of EIILM were arrested for issuing fake degrees and
the UGC also asked it to discontinue all distance mode courses. Alam had also
alleged that as per RTI replies, Shamshad did his MBA between January 2010.
and December
2011 from EILLM even though he was with the Indian Air Force between 2005 and
2011.
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