Heed the sane voice from parents : Relax MU shut down !
- The Sangai Express Editorial :: August 07 2018 -

This is a voice of sanity. Not shrill and certainly not a directive but an appeal, an Appeal, with a capital A.

An appeal from some hill based student bodies including ATSUM and so too did a parents’ body of students studying at MU.

The hill based student bodies and the parents’ body were bang on target in noting that it would not be possible for Manipur University and DM University to absorb all the students who have passed their degree courses and hence the need to look beyond Manipur for higher education.

Not only this, not all courses are offered in MU or DM University, and students will obviously need to look beyond Manipur for their higher education.

Moreover there will be many students who would want to pursue their higher education from outside Manipur just to get a feel of the outside world and what better time than while one is a student ?

Now with the MU stalemate having already crossed the 60 days mark and results of the 6th Semester exams yet to be declared, many students will miss the bus to higher education if the stalemate continues.

As noted many times in this column earlier, today it is no longer a question of who wins, the MU community or VC AP Pandey.

There will be only one loser and it is not the teachers who will stand to lose but the students.

This is a bare point which MUTA should acknowledge.

Professor AP Pandey did not let the teacher in him speak and take note of the precarious situation of the young students but this is no reason why the teachers in MUTA should not let the teachers in them speak and accordingly act in the immediate interest of the students.

Relax the shut down and let the results be declared.

If situation does not go their way, then definitely the agitation may resume but after the students, especially those who have appeared for the 6th Semester exams, have got all their necessary certificates to proceed for further studies outside the State.

The VC is now on leave.

Let the man who has been named as the VC in charge, in the absence of AP Pandey, be allowed to assume duty.

This should be the right way to go about it.

Enough pressure has been mounted and as stated earlier, this is not a battle to see who wins.

It is about setting certain things right in the varsity and the best way to go about it would be to let the probe team do its duty diligently and at the same time take up steps to see that the harm impact on the young students is minimised to the extent that is possible.

Keeping the varsity shut down for more than 60 days cannot be good for the future of the students and this is the point that the hill based student bodies and the parents’ body have conveyed in their stand to relax the shut down of the varsity.

Acknowledge the sensible appeal.

This is about the interest of the people who stand to be directly affected by the shut down.

Refreshing to see some voices of sanity emerge out of the cacophony of noises, which have all been about hurling charges and counter charges.

Now with ATSUM, ANSAM and KSO setting a deadline to resolve the impasse, the three hill based student organisations have let it known that they will no longer keep quiet.

Here it is worth recalling that it was the stand off between ATSUM and some other student organisations over the reservation issue at the time admission to MU that flung the doors wide open for the Centre to step in and send its hand picked man, AP Pandey as the VC of Manipur University some time back.

Lessons from the past should not be so conveniently forgotten.