Tamil Nadu Governor accuses DMK of using police to intimidate vice-chancellors
advertisement'VCs who reached Ooty had midnight knocks on their hotel room doors,' the post claimed. 'They were threatened by police with dire consequences to their life and told they wouldn't be allowed to return home if they attended the conference.'
He also claimed that one VC had been taken to a police station on the day of the event and that others had written to him saying the state government had warned them not to participate.Ravi questioned whether Tamil Nadu had become a 'police state' and raised concerns about academic freedom. 'Or is Chief Minister Stalin afraid of the consequences of the rise in standards of state universities which largely cater to Dalit and poor students?' he asked.Speaking to reporters, the Governor said, 'One of our Vice Chancellors is in the police station. Some VCs who reached Ooty faced something unprecedented. Secret police, Special Branch of the State told them: 'If you participate, you will not be able to go home and meet your family.''advertisementHe also criticised the state of Tamil Nadu's education system, saying that many government school students were unable to read Class 2-level textbooks or recognise two-digit numbers between 11 and 99.He blamed a steady decline in university standards on state interference and said this affects students from poor and Dalit backgrounds the most. 'State universities have produced more than 6,000 PhDs but less than 1% are NET-JRF qualified,' he said.Tamil Nadu Higher Education Minister Govi Chezhian hit back at the Governor, accusing him of politicising education.'The Governor is doing deliberate politics,' he said. 'If he wants to do politics, he should apply for the post of BJP's state president.'The Minister added that VCs may have known that attending the conference could be against the law. 'Threatening politics is in BJP DNA. Fighting for the state's rights is in our DNA,' Chezhian said.'How can a Governor make such baseless allegations against his own Government? The Vice-Chancellors have not attended this illegal conference called by you because they understand that your intention is to poison our universities with a particular ideology and politicise them,' wrote DMK Rajya Sabha MP P Wilson in a post on X.
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