Others on the list are Shephalika Shekhar, Mobeen Alam, Roshan Kishore and Renu Singh, rusticated for one year each.

While students maintained that their protests till date had been peaceful, the university administration has claimed that “some students took law into their hands and physically stopped the sale of the prospectus”.

The students were issued showcause notices by the JNU administration before being rusticated. However, according to the release sent by the administration, the students failed to “provide a satisfactory response to the notices and the Chief Proctor’s Office was unfortunately left with no choice but to take disciplinary action by rusticating some of them”.

Not amused by the turn of events, Sandeep Singh said, “The student movement will have to rise to this occasion. The ongoing protest is to defend the rights of those who dream of pursuing an affordable higher education. It is a battle against a draconian administration that is into wasteful expenses of public money and has been flouting all democratic norms of decision-making.”