Students go on protest as Gajendra Chauhan takes charge at FTII, 40 students held

Amid dramatic scenes and vociferous demonstrations by the FTII students, TV actor and BJP member Gajendra Chauhan on Wednesday took charge as Chairman of the premiere institute. Other controversial members of the FTII society with alleged BJP affiliation — Rahul Solapurkar, Angha Ghaisas, Shailesh Gupta and Narendra Pathak — also attended the first meeting convened by Chauhan as the chairman. 

Earlier, police rounded up about 40 student protesters using force as they staged a demonstration, beating drums and displaying placards with slogans of “Gajendra Chauhan go back”. The controversial appointee at that point was confined to his hotel room in the vicinity of the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII). 

A woman student of the FTII, Shimi said, “We were protesting peacefully to register our dissent because political appointees are taking charge as members of the FTII Society. We got beaten up without provocation and taken to police station.”  However, Pune’s Deputy Commissioner of Police Tushar Joshi said, “We had to use force because they wanted to block the way to the institute and therefore we had to detain them. We used minimum force.” The students continued to raise anti-Chauhan slogans even as his car entered the FTII premises. 

Meanwhile, the FSA said that though they had withdrawn their prolonged 139-day strike on October 28 despite lack of response from the Information and Broadcasting Ministry to their demand for removal of Chauhan, the students were determined to carry on their resistance to his political appointment in a peaceful manner.