NEW DELHI: Debate, discussions and lectures were organised in central universities across the country to generate support in favour of the Citizenship Amendment Act, the Human Resources Development Ministry told the Lok Sabha on Monday.
In response to a question by S Muniswamy, a BJP MP from Karnataka who wanted to know about the “steps taken by the government to overcome the situations in the university campuses in response to the CAA Bill (Act),” the Ministry, in a written response, said the universities had tried to “create awareness among students and employees”.
“To overcome the situations in response to The Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019, the Central Universities have organised debate, discussion and lectures to create awareness among the students and employees in this matter.”
Officials also said that universities and institutes directly under the Centre were “informally” instructed to organise events to ‘create awareness’ to tackle “misguided students”.
“We had told them to build support for the law and many of them did so and informed us later,” said an official.
The universities that organised special programmes on CAA included Vishwa Bharti University, Wardha University, Central Institute of English and Foreign Languages, Pondicherry University, Allahabad University, Banaras Hindu University and South Bihar University, among others.
Officials in the ministry also conceded that instructions were issued to the VCs and heads of other centrally funded technical institutions such as IITs “verbally” to not allow demonstrations against the Act by students or faculty.
“Some of the institutes head did it to too,” another official said.