Visva-Bharati failed to use Central funds for security

The lax security in the campus prevails despite a Rs 10 crore grant for the purpose by the Centre following the theft of Tagore’s Nobel medallion. And the university authorities have not been able to spend the better part of its Rs 6.5 crore tranche.

Admitting that they had not been able to spend much of the money, Shamit Roy, Registrar of Visva-Bharati, said: “Getting money from the government is easier than spending it.” The security steps, had they been implemented, could have prevented Sunday’s tragedy, in which an outsider entered the girls’ hostel unchallenged and shot dead a student who had reportedly spurned his marriage proposal. On Monday, as the Trinamool Congress and the CPM’s Students Federation of India forced students to boycott classes, the political storm buried the fact that the university authorities have been sitting for over a year on key recommendations for better security made by a high-level committee appointed by the President of India on March 6, 2006.

The committee, which included six national figures apart from the Governor, had observed in its report that “some hostels and the derelict Visva-Bharati quarters have been reported by the recent security audit to have become ‘dens of criminals’ ”.

The chapter on security centred the laxity that led to the theft of Tagore’s Nobel medallion on March 25, 2004. That and several other priceless displays were never recovered.

The committee had noted that in September 2006, the government had cleared Rs 6.5 crore as part of the Rs 10-crore project to overhaul security on the campus.

It had further noted that a committee of the University Grants Commission had recommended the creation of the post of a chief security officer, to be manned by an officer of the rank of additional or deputy superintendent of state police.

Despite some resistance from the university’s own watch and ward staff, the authorities had inducted some private security agencies to complement the security setup. “After outsourcing a part of the security apparatus, the security system of the university as a whole seems to have improved,” a security audit reported to the Vice-Chancellor on September 21, 2006.

Roy, however, said the university wants ex-servicemen, because they are trained. “But these ex-army personnel are used mainly to guard key areas like the museum and central office. The locally-recruited ones are not only untrained, but are familiar to the general population and hence, there are gaps in the security,” he said.