JNU
Never had a Twitter account: JNU VC alleges conspiracy after tweets in her name stir row
New Delhi/IBNS: After tweets from an unverified Twitter account under her name stirred a row, Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) Vice Chancellor Santishree Dhulipudi Pandit on Tuesday said she never had an account in the micro-blogging site alleging a conspiracy against herself.
The Twitter handle, which was active under @SantiShreeD, accused reputed educational institutions, Jamia Millia University and St Stephen's College, "communal campuses", used slurs for Indian Christians and calling civil rights activists "mentally-ill jihadists".
Following the controversy, the tweets were deleted.
Reacting to the controversy, Pandit told The Indian Express, "I didn’t have a Twitter account… It has been found out that it has been hacked and somebody internally from JNU has done this. The point is, many people are unhappy that I am the first woman V-C."
When asked whether she had a Twitter account, the female VC from the Left dominated university said, "Never. I never had. My daughter is a cyber-security engineer. Six years ago, she closed it for me because she was applying for some jobs in the US and she told me, ‘Mom, you are not going to be on any social media sites’. I’m not at all active on social media."
Alleging conspiracy, she said, "Why am I being treated so badly and shabbily by the press? What sin have I done? Just because Prime Minister Narendra Modi beat the Left in breaking a glass ceiling, which the Left did not do."
Rubbishing the criticisms of her ideological leaning, Pandit said she does not belong to any political party and is "non-partisan", NDTV reported.
The JNU, a central university reputed for its activism, was caught in the midst of a massive chaos in 2020 when a group of masked men entered into the campus and attacked the students injuring 20 odd including Students' Union president Aishe Ghosh.
The violence was followed by a protest by the students against a fee hike which made it an expensive university in the country.
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