Lucknow
In damage control mode, Banaras Hindu University (BHU) Vice-Chancellor Girish Chandra Tripathi on Thursday appointed Professor Royana Singh as the first woman chief proctor of the university.

The decision comes a day after outgoing chief proctor ON Singh resigned taking “moral responsibility” for the recent incident of sexual molestation of a student and the police violence that shook the campus after that.

While he had handed over charge to Dean of Students Mahendra Kumar Singh, the anatomy department’s Royana Singh was today appointed as the first woman chief proctor of the university. She is also the chairperson of a women grievance cell of the university.

Tripathi has reportedly been reprimanded for his mishandling of the students’ agitation by not sensitively responding to their demand for security measures after the sexual harassment of a girl student.

Instead of addressing their complaint, the BHU administration had allowed the police to brutally lathicharge the girl students, causing a national uproar.

The BHU administration faced acute embarrassment when a woman professor of BHU’s Mahila Mahavidyalaya Pratima Gond alleged that the police had even beat her up during the September 23 midnight cane charge on girl students as she was trying to protect a girl of her hostel who had fallen after police chase.

Gond, the administrative warden of the MMV hostel, has fractured her finger in the cane charge at the gate of the hostel. Demanding justice, Gond has said that she would be approaching the NHRC and NCW to lodge a complaint.

This exposed the BHU administration claim that there was no lathicharge inside the campus. After returning from the BHU executive council meeting in New Delhi in, Tripathi had called on the girls of Triveni hostel and assured them full security.

During the meeting, he reiterated the fulfilment of their demand of installing CCTV cameras inside the campus as well as restrictive entry on the routes close to women’s hostels.

He had also told students that BHU will soon deploy senior girl students of the department of physical education for security duty under the ‘earn while you learn’ scheme. By appointing the first woman chief proctor, the university fulfilled a demand of students of including female functionaries in the proctorial board.