The university said its reply to the RTI was related to the specific location and questions sought by the applicant. (PTI photo)

A Right To Information (RTI) reply filed by the Jawaharlal Nehru University administration on recent incidents in the university has exposed several discrepancies in the claims made by the university administration about the vandalism that took place in JNU before the January 5 violence. The JNU administration had filed FIRs against the JNUSU members based on these claims.

The reply was to the RTI filed by Saurav Das, a member of the National Campaign for People's Right to Information (NCPRI), under "life and liberty" clause.

"Date Of First Vandalism At JNU"

The first major contradiction is the date of the first incident of vandalism of the JNU server. According to the police FIR, few students including JNUSU president Aishe Ghosh, vandalised the server room on January 1 in the afternoon whereas the RTI reply claims that the first incident of violence took place on January 3 and not on January 1.

"JNU Says Biometric System Was Broken, RTI Says No"

The JNU administration, in an FIR, had claimed that on January 3, a group of students wearing masks had forcibly entered the CIS and switched off the power supply, making the servers dysfunctional, thereby affecting a range functions, including CCTV surveillance, biometric attendance and internet services.

However, the response sought through the RTI claims that no biometric system was damaged from December 30, 2019, to January 8, 2020. However, 17 fibre optical cables were damaged on January 4, 2020, as per the reply given through RTI.

"FIR Says Violence, RTI Has No Mention"

The Police FIR also claims that there was physical violence by the agitating students on January 4 but the RTI has no mention of any violence on the said date.

"RTI Says No CCTV Camera Was Damaged"

The response of RTI on the number of CCTV cameras vandalised from December 30, 2019, to January 8, 2020, in the JNU campus, claims that not a single CCTV camera was destroyed during this period.

V-C JAGADESH KUMAR BLAMES MEDIA

The Vice-Chancellor of JNU, Jagadesh Kumar has blamed media for twisting the facts. "Whatever information we have provided for the RTI query and to the police are factual. The media is misreporting what is going on and there is no confusion or contradiction in our statement."

"As per the complaint filed by the administration on January 3, 2020, about the incident in Centre for Information System (CIS) Data Centre, JNU has not claimed about damage to servers on that day. The RTI answers are correct and specific to the questions asked," the varsity said.

The RTI response also clearly states that servers are located at CIS Data Centre not in CIS office, which seems to be "conspicuously ignored while highlighting the matter in the media", it said.

"All FIRs and other complaints filed with police are in-line with the actual incidents that took place on January 3 and do not deviate from actual facts," it said.

The JNU administration reiterates that a group of masked students came to CIS Data Centre premises on January 3 and forcibly evicted the technical staff, switched off the power supply, locked the premises and squatted in front of the main entrance to the CIS Data Centre without providing any access to the centre.