Culture & Society · The Record
Yagna protest at Jadavpur University targets registrar appointed 8 months earlier as a 2-month acting stopgap
The Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh said the registrar and finance officer had overstayed their tenures and passed 60. The reviewed record instead documents a different dispute over how the office was filled: an acting appointment made in December 2025 without Executive Council endorsement and announced as lasting two months.
The Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh (BMS), a labour union affiliated to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, held a symbolic yagna on Friday in front of Aurobindo Bhavan, the administrative building of Jadavpur University in Kolkata, as part of a protest against alleged "administrative irregularities" at the university, The Daily Pioneer reported. The union alleged that the registrar and the finance officer had stayed in their posts after completing their tenures and passing the age of 60, keeping younger people out of jobs. Orissa POST reported the allegation in the same terms.
BMS said the ritual was held to pray for the university's overall development and for the "awakening of good sense" among the administration, and that it would symbolically remove negative influences affecting the authorities, according to the Pioneer.
The Jadavpur University Teachers' Association (JUTA) opposed the ritual, the Pioneer reported, calling it unprecedented on the campus. JUTA noted that the campus has long hosted Saraswati Puja, Vishwakarma Puja and Iftar gatherings, but said a ritual staged as a specific religious prayer was different in kind, and that it could open the door to competing demands from other religious groups; the association asked whether the authorities could then refuse anyone else. JUTA also said the row was pulling attention away from a shortage of research funds, decaying buildings and too little money for repairs, and asked all sections of the university to keep such activities out of academic areas while classes are running.
The Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) backed the organisers, per the Pioneer, citing what it alleged was past Azadi sloganeering by Left student bodies and saying the ritual was also meant to symbolically purify the campus. The organisers defended the event, saying that if rallies and meetings could be held on campus without causing damage, a yagna should not be objectionable either.
The university's officiating registrar, Selim Box Mondal, objected to a fire being lit in front of an old heritage building without prior permission and submitted a report to Vice-Chancellor Chiranjib Bhattacharya, the Pioneer reported, citing university sources. A TV9 Bangla fragment, whose surrounding text was not available in the material reviewed, states that the yagna had no permission - in Bengali, "এই যজ্ঞের কোনও অনুমতি ছিল না" (Daily Pol's translation). Because the fragment arrives without context, it may be reported speech rather than the outlet's own finding, and is treated here as unconfirmed.
The claim
Strip the ritual away and the union's protest rests on one factual assertion that can be tested against a record: that the people holding the registrar's and finance officer's offices are time-servers who completed their tenures and crossed 60 and are blocking younger candidates. The Pioneer and Orissa POST both carry that allegation. Neither report, in the material reviewed here, records when the current registrar took office or on what terms.
The record
A Press Trust of India wire dated 2 December 2025, carried by The Week, reports that Selim Box Mandal was appointed Acting Registrar of Jadavpur University that Tuesday. (The Pioneer spells the surname "Mondal", the PTI wire "Mandal"; the variance is unresolved in the material reviewed.)
The wire records the terms plainly. Bhattacharya said Mandal, a senior faculty member of the Arts department and a former vice-president of the West Bengal College and University Professors' Association (WBCUPA), would be "in the post for the next two months as an interim arrangement till there is a permanent recruitment".
The wire also records that a section of teachers voiced reservations over the decision of the Vice-Chancellor to appoint Mandal without formal endorsement from the Executive Council, the university's highest decision-making body. The head of the English department, Manojit Mandal, told PTI that the appointment had been announced "bypassing the EC by the VC. We have written to the VC and will raise the issue at the next EC meeting, which should be called at the earliest before the convocation on December 24". He called the appointment unconstitutional under university statute - his characterisation, not a finding by any court or authority. Bhattacharya, contacted by PTI, said he had exercised special discretionary power conferred on him, and that Mandal would discharge the responsibility for a limited period of two months as an interim measure.
A section of professors alleged to PTI that the decision was influenced by Education Minister and WBCUPA President Bratya Basu. Basu told PTI it was an internal decision of a state university with its own administrative and academic autonomy, and that he had no role. Bhattacharya said the decision was entirely his own, taken on the powers bestowed on him.
The arithmetic
Two months from 2 December 2025 runs out on or about 2 February 2026. This article is published on 10 August 2026, roughly six months after that stated expiry and a little over eight months after the appointment. The yagna took place on a Friday shortly before publication.
The limit of that arithmetic matters. The wire records the term as announced, not as served. Nothing reviewed here establishes that Mandal held the office continuously from December onward, and no reviewed report records the arrangement being renewed, made permanent, or endorsed by the Executive Council.
What the record settles, and what it does not
The PTI wire is silent on the registrar's age and on any earlier tenure he may have completed, so it neither confirms nor refutes the union's allegation on those points. What it does record is a different, documented dispute over how the office was filled: an acting appointment made without formal Executive Council endorsement, defended by the Vice-Chancellor as an exercise of discretionary power, and called unconstitutional under university statute by a named academic. That is a dispute on the record, not an established irregularity, and this article makes no finding about what the statute requires.
One further connection should be labelled as what it is. The officer the union's allegation appears to concern is the same officer reported to have objected to the ritual and to have reported it to the Vice-Chancellor. That identification is this article's inference from two passages in the same Pioneer report; the Pioneer does not state the link.
Analysis
Read as analysis and grounded only in the two records above: the coverage reviewed here treats the story as a religious-observance row, and neither report joins it to the appointment record from eight months earlier. The joinable fact is that Jadavpur's senior administrative office was filled in December 2025 on an arrangement its own announcement described as lasting two months, and no reviewed report records it being regularised since. A protest built on the premise of entrenched officeholders is, on the reviewed record, aimed at an office that has been conspicuously provisional.
The alignments also sit awkwardly with the framing both outlets use. An RSS-affiliated union is pressing against an appointee whom a section of the university's own professors publicly alleged was installed at the instance of the state education minister - an allegation Basu denied, saying he had no role. The Left-versus-saffron shorthand in the ABVP's response does not describe that.
The two sides of the campus argument are, on this reading, describing the same vacuum from opposite ends. BMS objects to officials it says hold no valid mandate. The teachers who went on record in December objected to the way the mandate was conferred. Neither of those positions is answered by a fire in front of a heritage building.
A date to check
A falsifiable prediction: by 2 December 2026, one year after the appointment, no public record will show either a permanent registrar recruited at Jadavpur University or the acting arrangement formally endorsed by the Executive Council. If either appears before that date, this prediction is wrong.
Limits and right of reply
No government or university primary source was reviewed for this piece. Neither the text of the university statute nor any appointment paperwork was examined. Nothing here should be read as a finding about what the statute requires, or about whether the Vice-Chancellor's discretionary power covers what he did. The finance officer half of the union's allegation is not tested at all: no reviewed source records who holds that office, their age, or their tenure status. The Pioneer report carries no date in the copy reviewed, which is a second reason the continuity of Mandal's tenure is left open above. The TV9 Bangla material is a short fragment without surrounding text.
Daily Pol has not contacted any party named or described here: Selim Box Mondal, Chiranjib Bhattacharya, Bratya Basu, Manojit Mandal, the Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh's Jadavpur University unit, or JUTA. None has been asked for comment on this article, and no response from any of them is reported here. Their positions as recorded above are drawn entirely from the two reports cited.