Note: This draft is in continuation to Musical Chairs Part -1

In his mail to the Students’ Senate dated 16/04/24, Prashant Mishra, Chairperson of Students’ Senate (2023-24), stated that Vijaya Mishra, the incoming Chairperson of Students’ Senate (2024-25), is ineligible to assume the aforementioned position under Appendix F which states that a person remains eligible if “They have not
been placed on Academic Probation or Warning by the SUGC/SPGC”. The DoAA office on 10th April at 16:48 had mailed Prashant stating that Vijaya had received a “warning from SPGC for not completing her SOTA seminar in due time”.

Prashant further stated the Charge Handover would resume on 2nd May 2024.

However, trailing the same mail, Ujjawal, the incoming parliamentarian, Students’ Senate(2024-25), had opined that based on his interpretation of various arguments provided(which have been elaborated later), “Ms Vijaya’s academic status is Active Normal, leaving no further discussion on the matter.”

The following article elaborates on the stance of various stakeholders regarding charge handover for the position of Chairperson, Students Senate.

As stated in part one, the Joint Meeting of Students’ Senate 2024 was supposed to reconvene on 12th April at 20:30 but at 19:57 on the same day, the Chairperson communicated to the student list that the senate meeting was postponed due to “ambiguity in a few documents.” When asked about what had happened, Prashant elaborated that he had sent a mail to DOAA on Tuesday (9th April, the day after the Joint Meeting of Students’ Senate ) asking for clarification on whether Vijaya was under academic warning in lieu of her thesis credits and SOTA seminar as discussed in the Senate.

To this, the DOAA office replied on Wednesday(10th April), stating that: Ms Vijaya’s “department had been communicated to issue her warning” based on her thesis credits. Additionally, she was also placed on “warning by the SPGC” for not completing her SOTA.

However, on the day of the meeting(12/04/2024), the DOAA office again sent a mail to the Chairperson of the Students’ Senate at 16:48 . Following the previous mail, this mail had an addition to the first point, which stated that with respect to her thesis credits, “ Her academic status is normal/active, and she is not on any warning.” However, the second point of the mail, which mentioned that she had received a warning from SPGC regarding her SOTA, remained the same.

These two seemingly contradictory points led to ambiguity according to Prashant. The offices were closed since it was Friday night; moreover, the DoAA was unavailable due to him being out of the station. Thereby, Prashant could not confirm Vijaya’s academic status and had to postpone the meet.

Later, when the DoAA returned, the President and the Chairperson went to the DoAA office. As per Prashant, after confirming Vijayas’ academic eligibility from DoAA, he mailed the Students’ Senate, informing them that Vijaya was ineligible to become the Chairperson under Appendix F as she had received a warning from SPGC.

In the first part of the article, Vijaya had alleged that “there has been a chain of concerted, politically motivated attempts to prevent her from assuming the Chairperson’s role.”

To this, Dhwanit asserted that “I do not believe this all to be politically motivated, we do what is required, what is right, what follows the book. The amendment was to bring equality.”

Regarding the amendment made to Appendix F over the mailing list, Prashant further clarified that on the matter of relaxing CPI criteria for PG students, he had asked to discuss and reform it through the academic senate because the criteria were sourced from the student governance report published by the academic senate. However, the same is not valid for every clause of Appendix F; hence, the SUGC warning clause was not considered to be in the jurisdiction of the Academic Senate.

The Chairperson of the Students’ Senate has the sole right to determine who will become his nominee in the selection committee of overall coordinators of various cells in the upcoming tenure. Vijaya had claimed that her not being appointed as the nominee for any of the interview processes was discriminatory action against her as this was not in line with the tradition. Prashant agreed that his not nominating Vijaya was against the convention. However, he argued that the person taking the interview of OC of any cell should be very knowledgeable, and according to him, as per his experience in the senate with her, “Vijaya was not knowledgeable enough to interview anyone for the position of OC.”

Prashant further adds that he had kept in mind that the incoming senate should have a say in appointments of OC of various cells; thus, all his nominees were incoming senators, whose credibility he justified based on their past experience in gymkhana. He reiterated that all the nominees for the interview process, including Dhruv, were part of the incoming senate.

In contrast to Vijaya’s claim that amended criteria cannot be applied to her retrospectively, both Dhwanit and Prashant argued that everyone is required to maintain eligibility throughout their tenure; hence, the amended eligibility criteria would apply to them.

On the claim that the amendment (to know in detail about the amendment, refer to part one) would restrict the participation of PG students and was targeted towards Vijaya, we spoke to Dhruv, the Incoming President of Students’ Gymkhana. He said that roughly similar numbers of both UG and PG students are placed under warning every year, and the reason they are asked to refrain from participation in Gymkhana activities is that they can focus on improving their academic record. Thus, placing similar restrictions on UGs and PGs doesn’t target anyone in particular.

Additionally, regarding Vijaya’s academic status being reflected as “normal” in Pingala, Prashant elaborated that Appendix F mentions whether the person concerned had been placed under warning or not among several other criteria; the said appendix nowhere mentions eligibility in relation to “academic status.”