NEW DELHI: Aligarh Muslim University Students’ Union (AMUSU) president Shahzad Alam on Sunday alleged he was suspended a day before at the behest of the Congress after he refused to join the party.

Alam claimed vice-chancellor Zameer Ud din Shah had asked him to join the Congress ahead of Union minister Jitin Prasada’s AMU visit on Friday. “Since the president (Alam) refused to join the party, the vice-chancellor with Prasada and the Congress’s consent suspended him on the day of the minister’s arrival,’’ an AMUSU press release said. The AMUSU urged the administration to publicize the CCTV footage of Alam’s meeting with Shah as evidence.

Alam said Shah had earlier in February pressurised him not to oppose Congress chief Sonia Gandhi’s visit to AMU. He accused Shah of “misusing the University for fulfilling the Congress agenda ahead of the Lok Sabha polls’’. Alam said he had evidence that it was being done for “the requirements of Sonia and her son Rahul Gandhi’’.

He questioned whether Shah was AMUSU patron or a Congress “mouthpiece” and why only Congress leaders were invited to the University.

The AMUSU accused Shah of “malign(ing) the sanctified image of the varsity’’. It said he had been asking its office bearers to join the Congress to further “his vested interest’’.

But AMU public relations officer Rahat Abrar rubbished Alam’s allegations and said he has a long record of indiscipline for which he had been repeatedly warned. “He was suspended for his unruly behaviour and disrupting a function in Prasada’s presence while the national anthem and the University tarana were being played,’’ he said. He said Alam was first warned on February 28 that his “unlawful activities and breach of discipline’’ were unbecoming as a student and an AMUSA officer bearer.

Abrar said he had earlier led a “violent mob that attacked Shah’s car’’ on March 23. “Prasada had nothing to do with what the AMUSU is alleging and that he was in Aligarh to launch a website, release a journal and inaugurate a Badminton Hall.’’

But Alam said Shah had prevented them from raising issues related to AMU’s minority character and Muslim reservation with the minister, the issues for which they have been elected. “The questions we tried to raise are detrimental to the Congress.’’