LUCKNOW / NEW DELHI: The Uttar Pradesh government and the Banaras Hindu University administration sent out conflicting signals in the aftermath of the police brutality and violence on women students of the varsity.
The BHU Vice-Chancellor and the State government both announced an inquiry into the events of last week but there was no clarity whether it is going to be one probe or two.
While Vice-Chancellor Girish Chandra Tripathi said he has ordered an inquiry by a retired High Court judge, the State government’s spokesperson Srikant Sharma, a minister, maintained it was a magisterial probe. “I have ordered an inquiry into the incident. Retired Allahabad High Court judge B S Dixit will head the panel,” Prof Tripathi told a news agency in New Delhi.
In Lucknow, Sharma said, “The BHU authorities have ordered a magisterial inquiry into the incident.” Earlier, speaking after a Cabinet meeting chaired by Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, Sharma had said a “judicial inquiry” had been ordered. He corrected himself later: “By mistake, I had said earlier that it will be a judicial inquiry. It is, in fact, a magisterial inquiry.”
Tripathi’s presence in New Delhi gave rise to speculation that he was summoned to the national capital to be debriefed by the Union Ministry of Human Resource Development but the BHU’s chief administrator said he was there for a pre-arranged meeting of the executive council.
Tripathi said, however, that he has kept Union HRD minister Prakash Javadekar updated on the issue. Blaming the violence on “rumour mongering” and “outsiders”, he said the issue did not figure on the agenda of the council meeting.