Students rally to protest draft ISI Bill proposed by Centre

Hundreds of students, researchers and alumni of the Indian Statistical Institute ISI on Thursday took out a rally before the city campus against the ISI Draft Bill, and NEP 2020, alleging it is aimed at curbing the autonomy and pre-eminence of the institution founded by eminent statistician P C Mahalanobis.

Hundreds of students, researchers and alumni of the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI) on Thursday took out a rally before the city campus against the ISI Draft Bill, and NEP 2020, alleging it is aimed at curbing the autonomy and pre-eminence of the institution founded by eminent statistician P C Mahalanobis. Around 150 protesters joined the rally, which was also attended by ISI's retired faculty and ISI Alumni Association Chairman Prof Shashi Mohan Srivastava. Naxalite leader Dipankar Bhattacharya, also an alumnus of ISI, was present throughout. In a show of solidarity, West Bengal Pradesh Congress president Subhankar Sarkar and secretary Ashutosh Chatterjee were also present in the rally, which covered a distance of one km from near the campus. Students of several other higher educational institutes also formed a human chain at College Street in front of Calcutta University main campus and Jadavpur University campus for the same purpose, an SFI activist said. Protests were also held across other campuses including North Bengal University and Cooch Behar's Panchanan Barma University, he said. ''The entire student community is united in this fight against the attempt of centralisation, corporatisation and saffronisation of education by the Central government. This is just the beginning of a joint fight against regressive policies, and it will continue in the days to come,'' said Udit Prasannna Mohanti, a protester at ISI. ''Any bid to erode the autonomy and identity of ISI and shifting its headquarters from Kolkata will be resisted at any cost,'' Mohanti said. The Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation released a draft ISI Bill last year, seeking to elevate its institutional status by converting it from a registered society to a statutory body corporate and upscaling its governance framework, thereby aligning it with peer Institutions of National Importance (INIs).

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