Hindustan Times via Getty Images Jawaharlal Nehru University Vice Chancellor Mamidala Jagadesh Kumar after meeting officials at the Ministry of Human Resource Development, at Shastri Bhawan on January 10, 2020, in New Delhi.

Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) vice chancellor Mamidala Jagadesh Kumar has maintained for months that the fee hike at the university, which has been vehemently opposed by students, is “well thought out” and was for the betterment of the university, but a new report casts a cloud over his own conduct.

The Telegraph reported on Monday that Kumar has been holding on to the accommodation provided to him when he was a professor in IIT Delhi for four years even though he has a house in JNU which he was allotted in 2016 when he became VC.

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The report said that Kumar, who is on lien from IIT Delhi, has been paying a meagre Rs 1,200 for the house, the market rent for which would be Rs 90,000.

Earlier IIT professors were allowed to retain their quarters for five years if they were deputed elsewhere as vice-chancellors. But the rules were changed in 2017 so that now a professor appointed elsewhere as administrative head can only keep the accommodation for one year.

The report said that Kumar was allowed to hold on to his IIT Delhi quarters because it was allotted to him before the rules were changed.

But this is even as IIT Delhi has quarters for only 300 of 500 teachers, and pays lakhs in rent for about 10 private houses in Hauz Khas, said the report.

Kumar still teaches classes at IIT Delhi, but one of the biggest complaints JNU students, who have been fighting for access to education for all, have been facing is that they are wasting “taxpayers’ money”.

The university administration has been under a cloud over the past week after a mob of masked attackers entered campus and assaulted students

Kumar said on Sunday, “There is a concern that there could be outsiders in the hostels. The Dean of the students has requested all the wardens to identify any such outsider so that appropriate action is taken.”