BCL in-fights take an uglier form

THAT the ruling party high command has lost control over its student wing Bangladesh Chhatra League(BCL) in the academic institutions has once again been proven by the long drawn gunbattle in Jahangirnagar University on Monday into Tuesday.
When the student wing of the party in power engages in infighting and turf wars it hardly needs emphasising that congeniality of academic atmosphere goes out of the window as the pursuit of higher learning takes a huge drubbing. Besides, the danger is the contagion effect it can have across campuses thereby threatening to bringing down the entire educational edifice.
What happened at Jahangirnagar University was as surreal as it was mind-boggling. A whole series of violent outbursts that engulfed the huge JU premises originated in an incident of a lone student from one BCL faction being manhandled by a few students of the other faction. Firearms were openly used and allegedly unidentified persons were seen in action as the police virtually played a mute spectator. If professional goons take over the campus that will be the hara-kiri of higher education. The police could not seize any firearm on the first day. The question is: how could student factions gather weapons and ammunition, except through the blind eye turned by the university authority and the law enforcement people?
We are pretty much certain that people in administration and top leadership of the Awami League have now become fully conversant with what actually ails the BCL and pushes and pulls that make them act the way they are doing. We recall that the Chhatra League central committee having been driven by lawlessness among its student fold in JU suspended all its activities a month ago. And now they have had to slap another suspension on them for a month again following the latest eruption of violence. Our point is such piecemeal suspension of a renegade unit's activities is virtually offering them impunity.
What is, therefore, necessary for the AL is to delink itself from such elements altogether and bring them to book. We wonder, how the Prime Minister's repeated warnings to the students to behave and her directives to the police to act have gone on deaf eras. We urge the Prime Minister once again to rein in the wayward BCL elements if she wants to retain the credibility of her party and the government.