Over two years ago, I posted a fairly long piece in Facebook to protest the vicious character assassination of Prof. Bidyut Chakravarty, the eminent professor of political science in Delhi University. I had to engage in considerable research including perusal of legal documents to prepare the piece. In response, some of the Delhi left-liberal academic mafia, whose deeds were thoroughly exposed in the piece, abused me in the filthiest language, accusing me of defending a sexual harasser to remain close to power. Needless to say, a range of these people blocked/unfriended me in Facebook.
It was a pleasant surprise to see that the piece I had forgotten about was in fact fully cited in a blog at that time. I am reproducing the piece below for posterity.
Left mafia at work Again
Nirmalangshu Mukherji
A familiar array of left-liberal intellectuals of Delhi has ganged-up against Professor Bidyut Chakravarty of Delhi University. Professor Chakravarty is a very senior political scientist with an outstanding academic record. Very very few academicians in the country, especially in the discipline of political science, can match his amazing publication record and vast international recognition. To date he has over two dozen books to his credit, all published by very prestigious publications (OUP, Routledge, Sage, etc.) mostly from abroad. I leave it to the reader to judge how his colleagues might have reacted to his eminence in the narrow-minded academia of Delhi.
To cut a long story short, a case of sexual harassment was initiated against Prof. Chakravarty and the matter was placed before the Apex Committee formed under Visakha guidelines vide Act XV-D of Delhi University. I will not comment on the constitution and the proceedings of the said committee on this case except to note that it is quite possible that the members of the committee—mostly fellow women academicians themselves—might have been politically connected to the opponents of Prof. Chakravarty in his faculty.
The said committee placed its findings before Delhi University and the report was deliberated in the Executive Council on 8.10.2007. The Apex committee itself recommended fairly mild strictures against Prof. Chakravarty: 1. A letter of warning should be issued to him. 2. He should be asked to step down from the Directorship of Gandhi Bhawan. 3. He should be debarred from all administrative posts and supervisory duties in the University for a period of three years. EC accepted these recommendations and acted accordingly. There was no recommendation for suspension, removal, demotion, and the like. Note that the operative period of these strictures ended on 7.10.2010.
Despite the mild nature of the strictures, Prof. Chakravarty challenged every aspect of the EC order. In the High Court, he (a) questioned ACT XV-D suggesting it violates various articles of constitution, (b) sought quashing of the strictures, (c) challenged the procedure of the Apex committee in not allowing him to cross-question the accuser, (d) sought quashing of appointment of another HOD in his place.
The accuser had also filed an FIR charging Prof. Chakravarty with abusive verbal behaviour and molestation, same as the charges before the Apex Committee. Prof. Chakravarty also appealed to High Court for quashing the FIR. [This aspect of the case is consistently suppressed by the mafia]
Apparently, FOUR things happened.
(1) In its judgment of 29 May 2009, the division bench of Sikri and Jain ordered as follows: (i) They upheld the validity of XV-D (naturally); (ii) Refused to interfere with the appointment of new HOD; (iii) They found very serious infirmities in the procedure of the Apex Committee in denying justice and fair trial to Prof. Chakravarty including item (c) above. AS SUCH THE HIGH COURT SET ASIDE THE EC RESOLUTION OF 2007 AND ABSOLVED PROF. CHAKRAVARTY OF ALL CHARGES.
(2) The bench of Justice Dhingra at High Court on 5 October 2010 considered the police report following the FIR and observed: “In view of the fact that there was no evidence that the alleged incident had taken place or the petitioner had threatened the complainant or molested her as alleged, rather the sequence of events shows that the scolding had taken place on the employees on their no being present during working hours, I consider that no proceedings could be initiated against the petitioner keeping in view the charge-sheet filed by the police which was more in the nature of a closure report. I, therefore, allow this petition.’’ THUS, TWO JUDGMENTS OF THE HIGH COURT SEPARATELY ABSOLBED PROF. CHAKRAVARTY OF ALL CHARGES, BOTH ON GROUNDS OF PROCEDURE AND EVIDENCE.
(3) However, since Delhi University failed to take remedial measure following court judgments, Prof. Chakravarty appealed to High Court seeking contempt of Court. On May 7, 2010, The Hindu, reported on the court order as follows:
“The Delhi High Court has let off Delhi University Vice-Chancellor Deepak Pental lightly in a contempt of court case after the University informed the Court that it had inadvertently informed Professor Bidyut Chakrabarty of the Political Department that it was still keeping alive two memorandums whereby he was held guilty of sexual harassment and barred from holding any administrative post for three years on that basis. A Division Bench of the High Court had in May last year quashed the two memorandums on a petition filed by Prof. Chakrabarty challenging them. Prof. Chakrabarty had received information about the University still putting reliance on the two memorandums despite their being quashed by the Court in reply to an application filed by him under the Right to Information Act. Following the receipt of the information, Prof. Chakrabarty filed a contempt petition against Prof. Pental. The University had earlier informed the petitioner in reply to the contempt petition that once the two memorandums had been quashed no further action against him would be taken. Counsel for the University further informed the Court that the person who replied to the RTI query had not seen the judgment. Following the admission of the faux pas by the University, the Court disposed of the petition saying no further order was required to be passed. While disposing of the petition, Justice G. S. Sistani said the University, as promised to the Court, shall within a week take steps to inform the Department concerned about the two memorandums being set aside.
(4) Since the issue of cross-examination of accuser in sexual harrassment cases under Visakha was a knotty issue, it reached the Supreme Court following direction sought by Prof. Chakravarty. The Supreme Court deliberated ONLY on the matter, in complete ignorance of the judgments of the High Court. In its order of 7 May, 2010, SC gave relief to Prof. Chakravarty by appointing a court commissioner to cross-examine the accuser on behalf of Prof. Chakravarty. Having passed merely the procedural order, the Supreme Court closed the matter at its end.
To emphasize, SC was not seized with HC judgments and had not set the HC judgments aside. Nor had the HC re-initiated the procedure to start a fresh inquiry on the case. As noted, the HC had in fact closed the case after obtaining assurance from Delhi University that no further action will be taken against Prof. Chakravarty.
Nonetheless, on receiving procedural clarification from SC, the University proceeded with the inquiry once again in clear violation of THREE HC orders since it never sought directions from the Supreme Court in view of the orders of the High Court. As it so happened (probably due to internal pressure from influential opponents of Prof. Chakravarty in the university), the Apex Committee went through the process again without any sanction from High Court and once again placed its findings before EC in 2012. Notice that the operative period of the EC resolution 114 of 2007 had already expired way back in 2010. Even then the EC proceeded to adopt resolution 235 of 21.3.2012 reaffirming resolution 114 in complete violation of High Court orders and without any fresh sanction from Supreme Court.
Prof. Chakravarty reportedly was outside the country during the period 2010-12 on a prestigious academic appointment. His response to the new inquiry was never sought, nor was he given a copy of the resolution to proceed against it if he so desired. Also, except for adopting a vitiated, mala fide resolution after the fact, the university did nothing since the operative period had long lapsed. Obviously, unless otherwise explained, the entire operation was conducted viciously in the absence Prof. Chakravarty to create a piece of paper against him despite assurances before the court not to take any action against him.
Now, an influential group of left-liberal academicians, who masquerade as defenders of tolerance and plural voices, are flaunting this filthy piece of paper to defame Prof. Chakravarty in the name of citizens of India just because Prof. Chakravarty’s name has appeared as one of the possible candidates for Vice-Chancellorship of Delhi University.
Nirmalangshu Mukherji Kavita Krishnan, Naveen Gaur, Ayesha Kidwai, Abha Dev Habib, Vijay Singh, Ali Javed, Mohan Rao, Poonam Kaushik, Sundeep Dougal, Shuddhabrata Sengupta, Kamal Chenoy, Purushottam Agrawal
