Jamia Millia Islamia on Monday, 29 August, cancelled the MPhil admission of student activist Safoora Zargar.
In a notice from the Office of the Dean, the Board of Studies cancelled Zargar’s admission based on the report by her supervisor and on the recommendation of the RAC and the DRC.
“The usually snail-paced Jamia admin moving at light speed to cancel my admission, foregoing all due process,” tweeted Zargar.
“Let it be known, it breaks my heart but not my spirit,” she added. “In anticipation of the approval of the same of the Faculty committee”
The usually snail-paced Jamia admin moving at light speed to cancel my admission, foregoing all due process.
Let it be known, it breaks my heart but not my spirit. pic.twitter.com/2t0Nos9qiK— Safoora Zargar (@SafooraZargar) August 29, 2022
Zargar was arrested under the draconian UAPA law in a case related to the anti-Muslim pogrom in northeast Delhi during protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA). She was granted bail in June 2020.
The institution informed the media last week that Zargar’s admission had been revoked after approval. Zargar had expressed her outrage on Twitter, claiming that she had been forced to wait for extensions that were readily granted to other university students. “I finished my fieldwork despite three COVID waves, a pregnancy, a serious state attack, spending time in jail, and severe COVID infections in the family. All of my progress reports were delivered on time. But I am being rejected submission at the finish of my thesis,” she wrote in a tweet.
The university gave three justifications for revoking Zargar’s admission. The second reason was that she had failed to ask for an extension as a woman scholar before the expiration of the predetermined maximum term, but the first reason was that her progress as recorded by her supervisor was unsatisfactory. The final justification given by JMI for withdrawing Zargar’s admission was that she had not turned in her MPhil dissertation within the stipulated five semesters and one extra semester because of the COVID-19 epidemic. According to the notice, this time frame expired on February 6, 2022.
Multiple student associations, like the All India Students’ Association (AISA) – Jamia Millia Islamia, National Students’ Union of India (NSUI), Campus Front of India (CFI) – Jamia Millia Islamia and others, have condemned the move by the university as “vengeful action”.
