Is Governor Tamilisai fomenting anger of IIIT-Basar students against State Govt?

HYDERABAD: Is the Telangana Governor going for a Constitutional overreach by trying to bypass the elected government is some cases and instigating politics in some others?

Telangana Governor Tamilisai Soundararajan has 'encouraged' students of the Rajiv Gandhi University of Knowledge Technologies (RGUKT) – IIIT Basara, to meet her. There is nothing wrong in students of a university meeting the Governor who is also the Chancellor of the institution. Tomorrow, the Governor is also said to be going to Basar to meet the students.

However, instead of playing the role of chancellor, she is seen as fomenting anger against the State Government and also political disturbances, using problems plaguing the students as a ploy to do so.

With many statements politically directed against Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) supremo and Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao, the chasm between the former Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)'s Tamil Nadu head, who is now the Governor of Telangana, Dr. Tamilisai Soundararajan, and KCR is widening beyond repair, as demanded by the students

Consequent upon the recent protest by RGUKT's students that raged for several weeks, the Telangana Government has begun to effectively resolve all their problems. Education Minister Sabitha Indra Reddy and officials discussed with students regularly and as a first step appointed a Vice-Chancellor and some staff members.

Meanwhile, the Governor 'encouraged' students from the university to visit her. In a normal instance, the Governor, as the Chancellor, is entitled to meet the students. However, after following a protocol – invite the students officially by directing the VC to send them to meet her.

In this incident, not only were the VC or other officials kept in the dark, the students also blatantly lied on the reasons for their leave applications to meet the Governor. They cited reasons like "passport application", "necessities", "mother is ill" or "semester requirement" for their visit to Hyderabad. This amounted to they meeting the Governor "on the sly". They could have mentioned that they were heading to Hyderabad to represent their grievances to the Governor.

'Newstap' secured images of the leave applications which can be seen below. In the larger interest of the students and their careers, their details like name, address, enrolment number have been blurred out.

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Officials and parents of the students, who learnt of this incident, slammed Tamilisai. They commented that she acted irresponsibly and put the future of the students at risk.

If her actual agenda was to redress the grievance of the students, why was the meeting done "unofficially" at least from the side of the students? However, the manner in which the meet up happened did not appear so.

On the other hand, it seemed more like adding proverbial fuel to the fire against the State Government.

The 12 issues raised by the students of IIIT-Basara were not unresolvable. However, there is a protocol to solve the problems and it is a time-taking process, which has already begun.

It has been seen that the protest was politically amplified and used as propaganda by others, like TPCC's Revanth Reddy and BJP's Bandi Sanjay. Old videos – videos from during the lockdown due to pandemic, are being circulated with a motto to defame the college and the Government.