St Stephen’s College teachers on Tuesday alleged that the student editor of the ‘banned’ Stephen’s News Weekly, Devansh Mehta has been stripped of his prize because he challenged the principal’s decision of imposing a ‘ban’ on the online magazine.
Mehta, a third year Philosophy student of the college was selected for the Rai Saheb Banarsi Das Memorial prize by the college faculty. He was due to receive the prize from the Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, who is going to be the chief guest at the college award function.
The prize is given to student of undergraduate Philosophy or Economics classes for high standard of personal excellence and a marked degree of curricular and co-curricular interaction.
List of prize winners
According to the teachers, the list of students who were set to receive prizes was put up on the college notice board on April 8, 2014. The list allegedly mentioned Devansh Mehta as the recipient of the coveted prize.
In the revised list of awardees put up by the college on Monday, Devansh has been replaced with a third year student of Economics (Hons).
College teachers protested against this move, saying that this was a vindictive action on the part of the part of principal Valson Thampu.
They claim that students are picked up for the prize based on a department selection, and the principal has no say in it.
“The person has misbehaved... The disciplinary committee has also said this in a report that he is guilty of misconduct and insulted the college. How can we award him?” Thampu told PTI.
Earlier, a college inquiry had found founders of the student weekly guilty of going online without getting approval of the principal.
But the college has stopped short of taking disciplinary action.
According to the inquiry report, Mehta had mobilised “the media without exploring the possibility of resolving the issue within the college”.