It’s been more than a month since a section of students at the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) took control of the campus in a daylight coup d'état of sorts. They have been in charge ever since and are running the university as their fiefdom while the official administrators remain paralysed.

These ‘students’ have slapped locks on the gates of all school buildings where they stage sit-ins throughout the day and do not allow their professors to even enter their offices.

No professor dare defy them. Those who try are heckled and harassed until they give up. The official security guards keep standing in utter helplessness.

It all started when the left-wing mob stormed the meeting of Inter Hall Administration (IHA) which manages all the JNU hostels. Here, the protesters held under hostage the Dean of Students (DoS), whose health was deteriorating by the minute. First, he was denied access to an ambulance and later, it wasn’t allowed to take him to the hospital.

Since then, the left-wing mob has held a female professor hostage for 30 hours. They barged into the home of a hostel warden in the dead of the night, snatched his four-year-old toddler and refused to give it back until he resigned.

These vandals defaced the buildings of their university with the choicest abuses and didn’t spare even the statue of Swami Vivekananda. Their hooliganism during the attempted march to Parliament ensured they lost any sympathy the larger public might have had for them.

What do they want? Azaadi, again. Azaadi, primarily, from what they call a sudden ‘fee hike’. The mainstream media has also been telling us that these protests are over ‘fee hike’.

Let’s examine the facts and set the record straight.

There has been no hike in fees at all. Tuition fee for some Bachelor and Master courses is still Rs 108 per semester (Rs 216 per annum). For M.Phil and Ph.D courses, it’s Rs 240 per year. Below is the detailed structure which remains unchanged and has been so since the time Indira Gandhi was Prime Minister.