In a bizarre event that unfolded last night at one of the top law schools of India, the West Bengal National University of Juridical Sciences (NUJS), Kolkata the Model United Nation Society (MUN Society) decided to ‘uninvite’ the Governor of West Bengal, Jagdeep Dhankhar who, on 6th January, 2020, agreed to attend the closing ceremony of MUN as the Chief Guest.
At around midnight, a 4th year B.A.LL.B. student and a member of the General Body wrote an internal mail stating “as members of the General Body we firmly oppose inviting an individual an individual who is in support of state violence on those protesting the CAA-NRC-NPR”.
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The email further stated, “We sincerely hope you consider uninviting him since being a chief guest in a closing ceremony of one of our major flagship events gives him a platform where his action and words that have aggravated the climate of fear are legitimized”.
If such a strong language against the constitutional head of a state was not enough, the concerned student went ahead with her threat to the MUN society and wrote, “We are extremely disappointed with the MUN SOC taking such steps and hope we can uninvite such an individual. We sincerely hope our requests are taken into account seriously.”
The email also had a link to a Google sheet that was supposed to be signed by the students who agreed the student’s email for uninviting the Governor. At round 1:15 am another student, and a member of the students’ body, wrote an email asking if it was legitimate to uninvite a guest on the basis of an email which was signed by merely 47 out of 500 students of the university. OpIndia is in possession of a list of 45 students who had signed the email that aimed at uninviting the Governor of West Bengal.
However, what came as an absolute shock was the email sent by the Convenor of MUN Soc who gave the details of how they invited the Governor and in light of the reservation made by a handful of students what their backup plans are.
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He wrote, “The NUJS MUN Society had made an informal invitation to Jagdeep Dhankhar, the Governor of West Bengal immediately after his appointment on the 2nd of August, 2019 to appear as theChief Guest during the closing ceremony NUJS International MUN 2020. However, the views expressed by the Governor in December were inconsistent with the views and ideals of the NUJS MUN Society and the NUJS General Body at large. In light of this we began looking for other dignitaries who could stand in for the governor and invite Mr. Gaurav Gogoi, Member of Parliament, Lok Sabha (Kaliabor, Assam) and Mr. Jyotiradita Scindia. At thispoint we did not considered it necessary to communicate with the Governor’soffice…”
It is important to note, as disclosed in the email, that the Governor called the MUN Society saying that he had accepted the invitation and the Convenor of the Society was invited to the Raj Bhavan the next day to discuss his logistics.
Despite the Governor having accepted the invitation and instructed his staff to arrange the logistics, the Convenor of the MUN Society went ahead with uninviting the Governor, and further wrote in the email, “…in light of the response by members of the general body which led to an important internal dialogue, we have taken the decision to not have the Governor as our chief Guest. We apologize that this decision came only after members of general body raised their concerns and regret that we didn’t taken it sooner.”
What is interesting to note here is that the Society plans to invite Gaurav Gogoi whose father and ex-Chief Minister of Assam proudly claimed and tweeted in 2018 that NRC was his brainchild after uninviting the Governor because he has opposing views on the NRC.