Dalit scholar suicide: HRD ministry defends sending 5 letters to varsity

Five letters written by Smriti Irani's HRD ministry to Hyderabad University are blamed by political rivals as one of the things which led to the suicide of Dalit scholar Rohith Vemula.

The letters asked persistently asked varsity authorities what action was taken on Labour Minister Bandaru Dattareya's complaint about "anti national activities" on the campus and the "violent attack" on an ABVP leader, PTI reported.

CNN-IBN has accessed two of these letters from the HRD ministry to Hyderabad University.

HRD officials however maintained it was standard procedure on such "VIP references" and that no pressure was put on the university.

Dattatreya, MP from Secunderabad, wrote the letter on August 17 last year, after which the ministry wrote to the University on September 3, saying that "issues raised by the MoS may be examined and facts intimated."

"It would be wrong to say that the ministry has put any pressure on the Hyderabad University. The Ministry had only followed the procedure as per the Central Secretariat Manual of Office Procedure.

"According to the procedure, if there is a VIP reference, it has to be acknowledged in 15 days and another 15 days may be taken to reply to it. Since no response was coming from the University, the ministry had to send reminders," HRD ministry spokesperson Ghanshyam Goel said.

After its first letter, the ministry sent four reminders on - September 24, October 6, October 20 and November 19 last year, to the University seeking facts expeditiously so that it could respond to the Minister of State Dattatreya. HRD officials said the University finally provided a reply only on January 7, this year.

An official said not only are the ministries supposed to reply in a time bound manner to VIP reference, but even in Cabinet meetings, the number of pending references, grievances, assurances etc has to be shared which makes it important that these are pursued.

HRD minister Smriti Irani, who on Tuesday visited Assam and accompanied the Prime Minister to IIT Guwahati, had either said the government neither intervenes in functioning of the university nor does it have administrative control over it.

With PTI inputs.