The Allahabad University students’ union president, Richa Singh’s , inquiry against the first woman to head the central university’s students’ union, was ordered by the vice-chancellor Professor R L Hangloo last month following a complaint by a rival that she was granted admission as a research scholar to a seat earmarked for a candidate from the reserved category.

The report concludes that Singh’s seat — one of two available that year for a PhD in Globalisation and Development Studies at the Faculty of Arts — should have gone to a reserved candidate, it makes clear that the “mistake” was committed by university staff involved in the selection process.

V-C Hangloo is expected to take a decision on the report’s findings soon. Richa would lose her seat because she was placed at second position on merit. Singh alleged that the inquiry was “politically motivated” and conducted “to harass”.

“This is an attempt to suppress the voices of students and one can understand what Rohith Vemula (the Dalit research scholar who committed suicide in Hyderabad) would have felt before taking the extreme step,” said Singh.

“I took opinion from Hyderabad University, Banaras Hindu University (BHU) and Aligarh Muslim University (AMU), too. In all these universities, if there are two seats only for research scholar admission, one is allotted to a reserved category student and the other to one from the general category. I have sent my report to the vice-chancellor with the view that in case there are two seats available, one should be allotted to general category and the other to reserved category,” Faculty of Arts dean Prof A Satyanarayan said.

“A mistake has been done by university staff in admission. My opinion is that such mistakes should not be repeated in future,” he said.

“When she filed a complaint against the appointment of the V-C’s Officer on Special Duty (OSD), an inquiry committee was formed. Now when an inquiry is being done on her admission on the complaint of another student, she should not call it harassment. The university cannot run according to her,” University spokesperson Prof K N Uttam said.the complainant Rajneesh Kumar said, “There were only two seats for admission in PhD. One seat was filled by a general category candidate but Richa was given admission on second seat that was supposed to be allotted to an OBC student.”

By Premji