HCU VC Apparao seeks security as students go on the rampage

Rapid Action Force units have been deployed in Hyderabad Central University following the need for security expressed by Vice-Chancellor Apparao who took charge from the acting Vice-Chancellor Periaswamy on Tuesday morning. As the Vice-Chancellor was holding a meeting with the university Professors on the campus, leftist students got agitated and indulged in large-scale violence smashing furniture in the Vice-Chancellor's lodge and elsewhere. Three students at least were injured in the violence. They indulged in heavy stone-throwing. Outside the VC meeting hall, the students collected and raised slogans before going on the rampage. At this stage, the Vice-Chancellor made an appeal to the police to provide him with security cover, taking into account student violence. Immediately, the police sent in the RAF units to the campus. At present, the Central University is filled with Central forces. The students' ire was that they had not been told about the Vice-Chancellor's coming back to resume duties following the tension caused by the suicide of research scholar Rohith Vemula, when Apparao was forced to go on leave. The student violence is against the backdrop of the HCU being rated as tops by world renowned educational agencies. The same thing cannot be said of the other Central University, Jawaharlal Nehru University, in New Delhi, which figures nowhere in the rating lists despite being endowed with the best of faculty in the country.