Ex-JU VC: Safety measures finalised under my tenure not executed

Kolkata: Amid the uproar in Jadavpur University over the death of a 17-year-old undergraduate student, former vice-chancellor Abhijit Chakraborty on Tuesday said UGC guidelines that bars ragging and other inappropriate conduct on campus should have been implemented in the institute much earlier. Chakraborty said, “I had taken steps to make the campus well-lit besides introducing CCTV camera surveillance, but some people were against such measures.”
“Keeping the campus well-lit was meant to prevent any law-and-order problems and to ensure that students, particularly girls, don’t feel scared. The VC can initiate such things on his own as per the university statute and there is no need to seek the consent of the executive council,” he said. Chakraborty said a “wrong molestation allegation” (on the campus) was flagged to engineer trouble in the last phase of 2014 as it gradually took a violent turn threatening the safety of varsity officials.