The South Asian University (SAU) in Delhi has terminated a faculty member two years after he was placed in suspension for questioning police presence within the campus. Dr Snehashish Bhattacharya, a faculty member of economics, was suspended on June 16, 2023, and served a termination notice on September 11 this year. The termination will be effective from the date of the suspension.
The events leading up to the suspension of the faculty member began in September 2022, when SAU students staged protests questioning the downward revision of stipends for post graduate students from Rs 5,000 to Rs 3,000. The University clamped down on the protesting students by calling police into the campus on October 13, 2022, and initiating disciplinary action against several of them, including suspension and rustication.
Following this, members of the faculty wrote to the SAU administration on two occasions—once, against police being called into the campus, and a second time, against the arbitrary nature of the action taken against the protesting students.
This was met with further backlash from the university administration, which, on December 30, 2022, served show-cause notices to four faculty members who had written to the administration. This included Snehashish Bhattacharya, Srinivas Burra, Irfanullah Farooqi, and Ravi Kumar. Among them, Irfanullah was a contract employee, while the other three were permanent faculty members.
The charges against them included “writing letters to the university community making wild and unsubstantiated allegations against the university administration; inciting students to act against the interests of the university; association with a Marxist study circle.” In January 2023, the four submitted clarifications to the administration, denying the allegations levelled against them.
The university then set up a fact finding committee, but allegedly denied the four faculty members request that the questions be shared with them electronically, and to allow them to respond by email. Instead, they were allegedly called for “an in-person interaction on May 19, 2023, wherein they were asked to provide detailed answers…in writing by the end of the working day, using pen and paper, and sitting in front of the committee members.” They refused to do so, citing the undignified nature of the committee’s demand. The four were then placed in suspension on June 16.
The matter was taken to court, but the Delhi High Court held that the case is not maintainable as it does not have jurisdiction over SAU, as it is a university established by the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) nations. An appeal is currently pending against this with a division bench of the High Court.
As SAU students continue protests, university administration remains unrelenting
Later, on February 6, 2024, the four were asked to submit regret letters, which both Irfanullah and Snehashish refused. The two faculty members who complied were reinstated while Irfanulah’s application for regularisation was rejected.
A disciplinary committee continued its inquiry against Snehashish, and served him a show-cause notice for termination, allegedly “in view of the findings of the disciplinary committee”. The committee reportedly found that “25 charges against him stand proved,” but the report was allegedly not shared with him. The committee is also accused of not “offering any explanation, reasoning, or justification in support of this conclusion; and it does not provide any justification for its final recommendation, contemplating a potential termination of his service at the university.”
The termination notice was served to him on September 11, even as an urgent application filed in the Delhi High Court on September 2 against it is yet to be heard.