Asma Khan

Student

Madhya Pradesh

HRDA has issued an urgent appeal to the National Human Rights Commission of India on April 12 regarding Ms. Asma Khan being expelled from the Government Motilal Vigyan Mahavidyalaya (MVM) in Bhopal over a Facebook post. Ms. Khan is a second year student doing Bachelors of Science. She is a member of the Bhagat Kranti Dal (BKD), a student organisation.

In last year’s students’ union elections, the BKD won all the posts of the union of MVM College against the Akhil Bharatiya Vidya Parishad (ABVP), the students’ wing of the BJP. Members of BKD decided to celebrate Kranti Divas in the college auditorium on March 23, 2018 and applied for permission from the college administration.

Members of ABVP also requested for the same venue for celebrations. The college administration allowed both the student groups to celebrate the occasion jointly at the same venue. As members of ABVP did not cooperate with BKD in organising the event jointly, the event was organised separately by BKD members. This was objected by the college administration and they cancelled the permission for the venue. Hence, members of BKD went on a protest in the campus.

Meanwhile, on March 19, 2018, Ms. Khan posted in her Facebook page about the protest by the BKD, but she deleted the post the next day. The text of her post which was later deleted is as follows: “When they should have been studying, students have been forced to launch an indefinite hunger strike to wipe out seditious ideology from college. It’s a strange irony that there is an educational institution in India where students are patriotic and teachers unpatriotic.”

Two days later, the college administration decided to expel Ms. Khan for one year. She went to meet the college principal on March 22, 2018 with her father, but she was informed that the Teachers Council has already taken a decision on March 21 to expel her for a year. She met the principal with her parents and requested that the order against her should be revoked. She asked for a chance to defend herself.