As police remain mute witness, SFI activists barge into four Kerala universities

Thiruvananthapuram, July 8 (IANS) With Kerala being governed by Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, the Students' Federation of India (SFI), the student wing of the CPI-M, on Tuesday, had a field day when they were given a free hand to barge into four universities in the state.

The SFI had announced this protest last week and it was directed against the state universities' Chancellor and Kerala Governor Rajendra V. Arlekar, who is trying to push through his agenda to run the state universities based on the ideology of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS).

When the situation at the Kerala University headquarters got worse, State CPI-M Secretary M.V. Govindan came to the fore and was seen talking to the protesting SFI leaders.

He asked the protesting leadership to cool down and later told the media, "we will not allow the Governor to have his agenda of imposing the RSS ideology in the universities and it will be strongly opposed and protested," and drove away from the protest venue.

It was the Kerala, Kannur, M.G. Kottayam and the Kozhikode Universities' headquarters that came under the siege of the unruly SFI activists.

On Tuesday morning, all these four universities saw a huge deployment of the Kerala Police.

Soon at all these places came hundreds of students, both boys and girls, and the normal sloganeering started.

After a while, contrary to the general norm when the protesters try to enter the compound, the police chased them away, but on Tuesday there was total laxity on the part of the police which allowed an easy passage for students to enter the universities' campus.

At Kannur, the police used water canon to chase the SFI protesters, but the latter forced open the main gate and entered the campus.

The Kerala University headquarters located a stone throw from the 140-member Kerala Assembly Legislative quarters witnessed the worst ever things happening.

The protesters then entered the building and moved freely while the police continued to be mere onlookers.

Soon it was a free for all and after 90 minutes the police was trying to coax the protesters to vacate the place, but when it fell on deaf ears, the police started to chase the students who were unruly.

It was at that time that CPI-M leader Govindan came and things cooled down at the Kerala University campus.

The SFI leadership has warned the universities' Vice-Chancellors that they should not toe the line of the Governor and if they do they will have a tough time.

"Our protest for the day is closing and we will return on Thursday when we will be marching towards the official residence of the Governor. We will not allow him and the Vice-Chancellor here to go forward with his RSS agenda," said the top SFI leader Sivaprasad, who led the protesters here.

However at all the four universities, the police ensured to take into custody some protesters and were seen taking them in police vans.

Now with CPI-M leader Govindan also announcing making things clear, from now onwards it's going to be a fight to the finish between the CPI-M and Governor Arlekar.

--IANS

sg/khz