Richa Singh, first elected woman president of the Allahabad University Students Union (AUSU), has asked Prime Minister Narendra Modi to ensure gender justice within the campus. Allahabad University is a Central University and functions directly under the Ministry of Human Resource Development. In an open letter addressed to Prime Minister Modi, ahead of his visit to Allahabad for participating in the Bharatiya Janata Party’s National Executive meeting, Ms Singh has said gender insecurity was widespread on the campus as a result of which female students were regularly being harassed within the institution’s premises.

Pointing out that despite several letters, the Ministry of Human Resource Development had failed to initiate action against the misconducts of university authorities, Ms Singh has said that left with no options, students and youth were seeking his intervention. She urged Mr. Modi that students were looking at him with a hope of saving their future, ensuring gender justice and checking the wrongdoings by immediately initiating an inquiry and action against the Vice Chancellor others.

“”Many in the University are hand-in-glove with those committing crime against women. The biggest tragedy is that the Vice Chancellor has appointed people accused of serious crimes against women, at the highest office of the administration,”” Ms Singh said in her letter while referring to the Registrar and the Officer of Special Duty to the Vice Chancellor.

Alleging that the University administration was increasingly becoming `hub of financial irregularities and corruption, the letter said “”in financial matters there is no transparency and tenders are distributed at the whims and fancies of those in the administration. Moreover, lakhs of rupees of public money is spent on personal comfort and luxury,”” she said while seeking a CBI inquiry into all financial transactions of the past one year.

The letter said that academic career of thousands of students was in danger because of the criminal negligence of university administration since they could not appear in the recently conducted undergraduate entrance exams (2016-17) because the university failed to make the necessary arrangements. Moreover, the LLB degree of thousands of law students is at stake as the university failed to obtain necessary recognition from the Bar Council of India.

Ms Singh has further accused the university authorities of adopting a biased attitude towards Dalits and OBCs as the Vice Chancellor has appointed a person convicted by the HRD Ministry of discrimination against OBCs as the joint-Registrar. “”In the most atrocious move, the VC is regularly harassing and intimidating students, faculty and non-teaching staff by attempting to falsely implicate the agitating student union leaders under serious charges and is also making efforts to unlawfully expel them,”” she said in her open letter.