A group of varsity students wrote to Visva-Bharati vice-chancellor Bidyut Chakrabarty on Friday seeking an unconditional repeal of Thursday’s order suspending two student leaders.

Visva-Bharati’s proctor Sankar Majumder had on Thursday suspended student leaders Somnath Sow and Phalguni Pan after the varsity accused them of “forcibly” breaking a lock at faculty chambers on January 9.

Pan and Sow, postgraduate economics students, had taken part in the students’ protest that day condemning the suspension of their professor and faculty association president Sudipta Bhattacharyya who had been critical of the VC’s alleged “saffron agenda”.

The suspension of students came soon after noted academics signed a petition addressed to the VC demanding Bhattacharyya be reinstated.

“The authorities led by the VC have proved that the campus won’t allow voices of dissent. Today (on Friday), we wrote to the VC and will launch a larger movement if the suspension of students is not revoked,” said Mainul Hasan, a student of English in Visva-Bharati and an SFI leader.

Letter to VC apart, students on Friday also organised a street corner protest.

A student protester added that the VC “got his chance to play out his whims” as there were no students on campus during the pandemic. “Had the campus been open, we would have shown him our power.”

The SFI has also called a protest march in Santiniketan against the suspension of the two students — Sow happens to be its unit leader — on Saturday afternoon. CPM youth wing DYFI will also organise protests in all 19 blocks of Birbhum over this weekend.

“First professor Bhattacharyya (was suspended) and now these two students — all three went against the VC’s move to saffronise the campus,” said Wasif Iqbal, SFI district secretary. “The VC proved how the BJP is desperately trying to kill the voice of protests.”

Varsity sources said the VC and officials close to him were “aggressive in penalising the economics professor for the role he played in revealing how the VC had insulted Nobel laureate Amartya Sen”.

A teacher said that on Wednesday the VC had summoned teaching and non-teaching staff of the economics department and asked them to identify the students who took part in the protests against Bhattacharyya's suspension.

Sources in Visva-Bharati said that they were planning to suspend more students who had joined the protest against Bhattacharyya’s suspension.

Authorities reportedly also sacked a temporary employee of economics department for not resisting students’ attempt to “forcibly breaking seal/lock of the chamber of a particular professor”.