Surendranath Law College in Kolkata was plunged into a governance and safety crisis after students allegedly confined vice-principal Mohammadi Tarannum inside her office overnight and forced her to write a resignation letter, following protests over attendance requirements for upcoming examinations.
Tarannum said she was held at the college in Sealdah through the night along with five other female teachers after students protested against the decision to bar candidates who did not meet the attendance requirement for the eighth-semester examinations scheduled to begin in the third week of September. She said she did not resign voluntarily and was forced to write the letter.
According to Tarannum, the students disconnected the electricity supply to her room at about 4.30am on Friday. Around half an hour later, the teachers emailed the Chief Justice of Calcutta High Court, describing themselves as confined against their will and alleging abusive language, locked washroom facilities and physical obstruction when they tried to leave.
The college does not have a principal, and Tarannum has been running the institution as vice-principal for more than a decade. She said the college had maintained attendance records periodically and that students who fell short of the required threshold were making baseless allegations. The protests began on Wednesday, she said, and were allegedly led by the RSS-affiliated Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad.
The Bar Council of India has stipulated a minimum attendance of 65% for students to sit for examinations. College governing body president and Barrackpore BJP MLA Kaustav Bagchi wrote to Tarannum on Thursday evening proposing that students with attendance below 65% be allowed to take the examinations after submitting an undertaking. His letter said an informal meeting had decided that students with attendance below 40% would not be allowed to appear, although the applicable regulation set the threshold at 65%.
Bagchi said the attendance records had not been properly maintained by the college and that the students had grounds to protest. He also shared a video in which Tarannum appears to say that she was resigning willingly. Tarannum later said she had been forced by the students to make that statement. A copy of the resignation letter shared by an ABVP member cited unavoidable family and health-related issues and was sent to the vice-chancellor of Calcutta University.
Police said they received an alert from Tarannum and deployed a team outside the college during the night. An officer from Muchipara police station said the police did not enter the campus because Tarannum had not given permission and had said she could remain confined for 72 hours. When she fell ill at about 10am on Friday, police entered with a Medical College team and rescued her around 2pm after she was examined.
The episode has brought together disputes over attendance records, examination access, college administration and the limits of student protest. The immediate institutional questions remain the status of the resignation letter, the eligibility of students for the examinations and the action to be taken over the alleged confinement. Bagchi’s letter proposed allowing students below the prescribed attendance threshold to appear subject to undertakings, while the college authorities maintained that the Bar Council requirement applied.
