By Arfa Khanum
After speaking to more than a dozen teachers and students of AMU, I can safely say that ahead of general elections, this is a well-planned strategy-with the help of a ‘media partner’ to drag AMU into politics and turn it into a national controversy once again.
As part of a regular exercise, AMU’s Students’ Union had set out to meet representatives from all political parties ahead of Loksabha Elections. While there were other reporters who had sought prior permission, Republic TV had entered the meeting of AMU Students’ Union without permission. When they were asked to leave, they still kept filming which eventually led to violence.
The root cause seems to be the expected visit of Asaduddin Owaisi that a student called Ajay Singh was opposing. Ajay is a close relative of a BJP MLA from Barauli, Aligarh. He previously contested Students’ Union Elections but lost.
In the month of January, Ajay had tried to carry out a ‘Tiranga Yatra’ in the campus (without permission from the authorities) but failed. He still managed to get a huge screen time on Republic TV that as usual showed the university in poor light and called AMU anti-national.
Ajay Singh didn’t think that for his ‘political activism’ it was important to take permission from the authorities. Similarly, Republic TV doesn’t believe it should take permission to enter and cover the campus.
It appears that Ajay Singh with the help of his relatives who are also local BJP activists had planned to create a brawl (and successfully so) that would be aired live on Republic TV.
(Author is a senior journalist associated with TheWire.in. This article is reproduced from her facebook post.)
