JU drive to erase writings on the walls; whitewashing begins from Aurobindo Bhavan
Telegraph | 26 March 2025
Jadavpur University has started whitewashing the slogans and graffiti on its walls.
Many of them came up after education minister Bratya Basu’s visit to the campus on March 1, which led to student violence and allegations that his car hit a protester on the way out.
The whitewashing drive has begun from Aurobindo Bhavan, the university’s administrative headquarters.
It will move to Tech-nology Bhavan where a wall had the call for an “Azad Kashmir”, which prompted Kolkata Police to start cases under sections 61(2) (criminal conspiracy) and 152 (acts endangering sovereignty, unity and integrity of the country) of the Bharatiya Nyay Sanhita (BNS), said an official of JU.
Two JU students, said to be active members of an ultra-Left union, and an alumnus had been arrested on charges of arson and vandalism on the campus on March 1 and slapped with these sections of the BNS.
On Monday, when Metro visited Aurobindo Bhavan, labourers engaged by the university were whitewashing a slogan that said “Arrest Bratya Basu”.
The minister came to the campus to attend an annual general meeting of a pro-Trinamool teachers’ association and was barricaded by supporters of the Left and ultra-Left student unions who wanted Basu to immediately hold discussions on the resumption of campus polls.
When some protesting students attempted to physically prevent the minister’s car from leaving, one of them was allegedly hit by the car and had to be admitted to a hospital.
On the walls of Aurobindo Bhavan, there was graffiti of the injured student, Indranuj Roy, and also that of Mohammad Sahil Ali, the former student arrested on charges of arson and vandalism. Both were whitewashed on Monday.
The two arrested students were Soumyadeep Mahanto and Souptik Chanda..
The walls outside JU vice-chancellor Bhaskar Gupta’s office, which had been painted with slogans seeking the immediate restoration of campus polls, too, were cleaned up.
“The whitewashing is being done across the campus as part of a beautification drive. We need to keep the campus neat and clean,” Gupta told Metro.
Asked whether the “Azad Kashmir” slogan on the outer wall of Technology Bhavan near JU’s Gate No. 3 will be whitewashed as well, Gupta said: “All I can say is that the entire campus will be beautified. Therefore the whitewashing is being carried out.”
A senior JU official said the decision to whitewash the walls was taken at a meeting on March 17, the first meeting attended by the VC after he returned to the campus following a fortnight’s hospitalisation because of ill health.
On March 17, Gupta had told reporters it was “essential” to install more CCTV cameras on the campus to ascertain in the future whether students were putting up “anti-national posters”.
JU’s registrar Indrajit Banerjee said: “We are planning to appeal to students so they can put up posters and draw graffiti in a designated corner of the university.”