New Delhi: Kannan Gopinathan, the IAS officer from Kerala who resigned late last month in order to be able to speak freely about the virtual ‘Emergency’ in Kashmir, was on Monday barred from visiting Jaykar Knowledge Resource Centre (JKRC) – the library at Savitribai Phule Pune University (SPPU).
The idea of Gopinathan visiting was dropped after a confrontation between students and library officials.
According to the Indian Express, while the university students wanted him to visit the library, Gopinathan was stopped over “procedural” requirements. Aparna Rajendra, director-in-charge of JKRC, told the daily that by asking for an application for the officer’s visit, the institute was merely following procedure.
“We would have happily shown him the library, but since the reading hall is also used by other students, holding a public talk or lecture there would not have been possible,” Rajendra was quoted as saying. The public lecture, she said, “would have disturbed the other students.”
She further said that the university wasn’t given prior intimation about Gopinathan’s visit. “Visits involving high-ranking officers require official communication made through the registrar’s office. So I advised the students to submit an application for this, which is part of maintaining our record,” she said.
Students, on their part, expressed confusion over why library officials had insisted on an application and claimed that they had behaved rudely.
Also read: ‘This is Not the 1970s’: IAS Officer Quits in Anguish Over Kashmir ‘Emergency’
“The official did not inform us why the application was required. We didn’t know the official procedure but would have followed it. But we were upset at the manner in which the library officials spoke to us,” Kamalakar Chandrakala, a second-year commerce student of SPPU was quoted by Indian Express as saying.
Gopinathan told the English daily that he was visiting the SPPU campus on Monday as part of exploring Pune. The students wanted him to see the library but after the “conversation between students and the library official got into a confrontational mode, we decided not to escalate the matter further and dropped the idea of visiting the library,” he said.
The students then held an informal session with Gopinathan at the Pune university’s canteen.
Last month, Gopinathan had resigned from the prestigious service “in order to speak freely” about the Centre’s actions in Kashmir. “This is not Yemen, this is not the 1970s, that you can deny basic rights to an entire people and nobody will say anything about it,” Gopinathan told The Wire last month.