Lucknow: Richa Singh, the first woman president of Allahabad University Students’ Union (AUSU) should have been celebrating Women’s Day this year. Instead, she is apprehensive of her future on the campus.
“Today, I can understand what Rohith Vemula went through and why he committed suicide. Suddenly I am being hounded by the university officials who have launched an inquiry against me regarding my admission as a Ph.D scholar. This is what I get for raising my voice against the ABVP, BJP and RSS,” she said.
Richa had contested the students union election as an independent and was later supported by the ruling Samajwadi Party. When she won the elections, history was created because she became the first woman president in the history of the university.
However trouble began shortly after her election last year when she did not allow BJP MP Yogi Adityanath to address a meeting on the campus.
In January, this year, when Richa invited senior journalist Siddhartha Vardarajan for a lecture in the University, ABVP activists forced its cancellation on the grounds that the journalist was a ‘controversial man with a communal mindset’.
Later, the university set up an inquiry and Richa wrote to HRD Minister Smriti Irani saying that “The V-C has constituted an inquiry committee into my admission, two years after my admission for Ph.D”. She did not receive any response.
