Visva-Bharati authorities on Saturday refuted the charges of confining teachers for six hours on Friday to try and “forcibly grab” a copy of a mass petition to the Prime Minister and the President on the varsity’s state of affairs, and said it was a series of meetings to discuss teacher absenteeism and other issues.

A varsity news release, along with identical undertakings by 10 English teachers, claimed on Saturday that VC Bidyut Chakrabarty had called the meeting on Friday. It claimed that teachers of the English department were initially reluctant to admit they were absent on campus during the VC’s visit on Wednesday but later did so. The news release was shared by the varsity’s public relations officer Anirban Sircar to a media group on WhatsApp.

“In order to discuss the issue of absenteeism, the Vice Chancellor called a meeting on the day he visited the department… initially they (English teachers) were reluctant to admit (on Friday) that they were absent; after sometime, they admitted verbally and finally they agreed to write that they were absent on that day…,” the news release stated.

Later, Sircar in another WhatsApp message to the media said it did not take long to discuss the issue of absenteeism but there were many other meetings that lasted six to seven hours on Friday. He did not specify if all teachers of the English department were part of those meetings, or whether Chakrabarty was.

A teacher of the English department said they were forced to sign the undertaking when a colleague fell ill during the confinement. “The varsity did not clarify in the news release why teachers were not present on campus on Wednesday. There was a pre-scheduled virtual meeting of the board of studies where interviews of 14 PhD scholars were held with experts from various universities. We signed the undertaking as we did not know how long the confinement would last,” a teacher said.

“...The format (of undertakings) is the same but handwritings differ. Is it possible for senior teachers to write identical undertakings if they’re not dictated?” asked a professor.

On Friday, two physics teachers had filed a police complaint accusing the varsity of illegally confining colleagues. They received showcause notices on Saturday. Their head of the department Manas Maity was removed from his post. Insiders said authorities suspected Maity was involved with the drive to send a mass petition to Narendra Modi and Ram Nath Kovind.