Rajshahi University Central Students’ Union general secretary Salahuddin Ammar on Sunday removed a congratulatory banner put up on the campus welcoming Tarique Rahman on becoming the Bangladesh Nationalist Party’s chairman.
At about 2:30pm, Ammar removed the banner installed on Paris Road by professor Mohammad Nesar Uddin, the RU Arabic department professor and Zia Parishad Rajshahi district unit president.
Earlier in the day at about 11:30am, Ammar issued an ultimatum through a Facebook post, asking the relevant teacher to remove the banner by 2:00pm.
In the post, he cited Section 55 (2) of the Rajshahi University Act, 1973, claiming that it prohibits party politics, political campaign on campus, and the use of teachers’ associations for partisan political activities.
However, Section 55 (2) of the act states that ‘the service conditions shall be determined without any prejudice to the freedom of the teacher or officer to hold any political views and to keep association with any lawful organisation outside the University and shall be clearly stated in the contract.’
After removing the banner, Ammar shared a video on Facebook explaining that he had requested the teacher remove it within the stipulated time and since no action was taken, he removed it himself as a student.
‘I will oppose any display of partisan banner politics by teachers whenever I see it on campus. Teacher politics is destroying education and turning individuals into political brokers,’ he wrote.
In another Facebook post, Ammar said that the same stance would be applied to Jamaat-e-Islami as well, though he claimed that the party had so far not displayed any banners, held rallies or openly expressed political identity on the campus.
‘You may belong to or practise the politics of any party, but do it outside the campus,’ he added.
Ammar further said that while students were demanding a ban on student politics, the root of the problem lay in what he described as ‘dangerous teacher politics’, urging students to become vocal against it.
Contacted, Ammar told New Age that the explicit mention of the phrase ‘outside of the university’ in Section 55 clearly implied that no political activities were permitted within the university premises.
He argued that if political activities were lawful inside the campus, there would have been no need to specifically mention ‘outside’ in the ordinance.
He further claimed that legal language was not always written in a literal or plain manner; rather, it required contextual and interpretative understanding.
Meanwhile, terming the incident ‘barbaric’, professor Mohammad Nesar Uddin questioned how a congratulatory banner in Tarique Rahman’s honour could cause any harm to Rajshahi University.
‘I strongly condemn and protest this act,’ he said, alleging that student leaders were neglecting their studies and instead roaming the campus monitoring activities.
‘I leave the judgement of this matter to the nation,’ he added.
