JNU makes 75% attendance compulsory; students call it `illegal`, boycott classes

New Delhi: Students of two departments of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) on Tuesday boycotted classes against the compulsory attendance order of the administration.

Students from the School of International Studies and School of Languages did not turn up for their classes after the JNU Students Union gave a call for boycotting lectures. 

"Students boycotted their classes and attendance to give a firm message to teachers who are coercing students to give attendance and the JNU Vice-Chancellor, who is trying to impose an illegal policy measure which was never part of or was discussed in the Academic Council meeting," the union said in a statement.

The union has called for a boycott of classes in the other departments on Wednesday, which include School of Social Sciences, Arts and Aesthetics and those of the science department. 

"Students complied on their own with the strike. Barring one or two no one attended classes. The boycott was observed throughout," Yashaswani Sehrawat, an international studies scholar at the varsity said. 

The students` protest is over an administration order which mandated minimum 75 per cent attendance for all students to qualify for exams. Scholars are refusing to comply with the order calling it against the JNU culture and arguing that making them lecture-bound would hamper the otherwise free flow of knowledge.