A college teacher, who was beaten up by Trinamul student leaders on Wednesday, said on Friday that “had the state government acted tough” during earlier incidents of attacks on the teaching fraternity, he would not have faced what he did.
Subrata Chatterjee was pinned down to the ground at the gate of Konnagar’s Nabagram Hiralal Paul College and punched in the face. His fault: he had stood by his students who refused to chant pro-Trinamul slogans.
“Had the government acted tough by trying to rein in the students and curb the activities of the union, the students won’t have dared to continue the practice of targeting us. But this did not happen. The attack on me is an outcome of that inaction. Now that the chief minister has intervened, I hope the situation will change,” said Chatterjee, who teaches Bengali.
Chief minister Mamata Banerjee on Thursday had called up Chatterjee to express “regret” for Wednesday’s attack. She also asked him not to feel “scared”.
Banerjee also had sent the party’s Hooghly district chief to the college and the leader fell at Chatterjee’s feet to apologise for the attack.
Police arrested the two accused and slapped them with sections, included two non-bailable ones.
But had the government displayed this promptness earlier, the situation would not have come to this pass, he said.
As Chatterjee spoke to Metro, Bhaskar Das, one of the teachers who was assaulted earlier by the Trinamul students leaders, was standing beside him.
A video clip that had emerged on February 12, 2018, showed a Trinamul Congress student leader, Gourab Mitra Mustafi, repeatedly saying “maar, maar (beat up, beat up)” and raising his right hand to strike as he stood close to Das, an associate professor of chemical engineering at Rajabazar Science College.
Chatterjee and Das met at Unnayan Bhavan in Salt Lake on Friday afternoon while taking part in a sit-in organised by the Left-backed West Bengal College and University Teachers’ Association (WBCUPA) over pay revision.
Chatterjee said: “Bhaskar da was attacked on the campus. Education minister Partha Chatterjee had then spoken to him on phone to condemn the assault. But did they do anything effective to rein in the students who have been on the loose?”
Calcutta University had expelled Mustafi, but several teachers said he was soon back on the campus. Mustafi now continues to act as one of the student leaders, they said.
Chatterjee said: “It’s also not about expelling one individual. You have to control them so that they don’t meddle in the admission process by taking money to push undeserving candidates. But this government can’t even stop the union from functioning despite bringing an act to abolish them and set up students’ council instead,” said Chatterjee.
When the higher education department had promulgated West Bengal Universities and Colleges (Composition, Functions and Procedure for Election of Students’ Council) Rules, 2017, the unions got dissolved.
As the government is yet to hold elections for constituting the council, the unions are not supposed to be in existence, said an official of the higher education department.
“The two students who had beaten me up would frequently come to the union room and interfere in affairs of the students. The union room should be under lock and key. But they remain in business. Since the state government does not act tough, the students feel emboldened to act unchecked,” said Chatterjee.
‘Ban’ on outsiders
To counter the fall-out of Wednesday’s attack on college teacher Subrata Chatterjee in Konnagar, the Trinamul Chhatra Parishad in Hooghly has decided to set up monitoring groups of 10-15 students for each of the district’s 28 colleges. The monitoring teams will maintain a vigil on the entry of outsiders, or former and irregular students to the colleges.
“We will send the circular to all units of our students’ wing in the 28 colleges of the district,” said Gopal Roy, the TMCP president of Hooghly district. “The groups of students will report to the principals immediately in case of trespassing,” he said. (See Page 9)
