Visva Bharati Violence: ABVP Not Involved in Violence in University Campus, Says Sunil Ambekar

Kolkata, January 19: The ABVP national organising secretary (East) Sunil Ambekar on Sunday said the student organisation was not involved in the January 15 unrest on the campus of the Visva Bharati university. He dared those linking the ABVP to the violence on the university campus to prove their charge.

Asked about Students Federation of India allegations that ABVP was behind the student unrest on January 15, Ambekar told reporters "they (left students) fight among themselves and then link ABVP with that." Daring the Left to reveal the true identity of those involved in the violence, he said "let the identity of those having been arrested in connection with the incident be ascertained. I am throwing the challenge." ABVP Erects Statues of VD Savarkar, Subhas Chandra Bose, Bhagat Singh at Delhi University North Campus Overnight.

ABVP national secretary Saptarshi Sarkar claimed that the two persons arrested in connection with Visva Bharati incident on January 15 "are linked" to Trinamool Chhatra Parishad and alleged the state government is "harbouring violence in educational institutions in West Bengal." According to police two groups of students clashed inside the Visva Bharati campus on January 15 leaving two persons injured.

The university authorities had said that the clash was not linked to politics but the SFI alleged that ABVP activists armed with rods attacked its members in the wake of SFI's protests against CAA. Ambekar, who was talking to reporters on the sidelines of the 37th state unit conference of ABVP, the students wing of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), also blamed the Left for creating lawlessness in few campuses they have some strength, like the Jawaharlal Nehru University, Jadavpur University.

He said members of left students unions had confined journalist-MP Swapan Dasgupta for over six hours in Visva Bharati campus when he went there to deliver a lecture earlier this month and misbehaved with union minister Babul Supriyo in Jadavpur University in last September when he had gone to JU campus to attend a cultural function.

"They (the left) talk about democracy and they term it as democratic protest but when some guests go there to attend a seminar, to address a lecture and they confine these guests and misbehave," he asked.

About allegations of ABVP involvement in JNU violence on January 5, he said taking up the issue of fee hike in the JNU, the SFI and Naxals had instigated trouble in the campus by locking up different rooms, obstructing the car of the vice-chancellor, threatening one woman warden to submit her resignation letter in writing and attacking ABVP members.

He said the truth will come out once the probe is completed. Turning to West Bengal, Ambekar said "an atmosphere of fear prevails in the campuses of the state where the Trinamool Congress Chhatra Parishad and Left unions are preventing the ABVP to set up units. But we are already getting lots of support from the student community."

Sarkar said the organisation will open units in all colleges of the state, take out rallies in support of CAA. "We will also step up protests to facilitate students union elections in different colleges, which had not been held by the TMC government for years," he said.