New Delhi: Professor Snehashish Bhattacharya, a faculty member in the economics department at the South Asian University (SAU) since 2011, was terminated from service on September 11, 2025. His termination came more than two years after he was suspended on June 16, 2023, on account of misconduct “against the university interests”.

The university’s official order sent to Bhattacharya, which The Wire has seen, said that his services “are terminated with effect from 16th June, 2023 i.e. your date of suspension”.

Set up by the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) in New Delhi, the university saw students' protests in September 2022 over stipend cuts and demands for representation on the varsity’s gender sensitisation and sexual harassment committees.

Bhattacharya drew the SAU administration’s ire that year when he joined other faculty members in writing to the administration in support of students’ concerns.

On October 13, 2022, the administration called the police onto campus against protesting students, and on November 4, 2022, suspended five students.

The day after the police entry, Bhattacharya was among 13 faculty members who wrote to the administration opposing the action and urging resolution. He later sent another email, co-signed by 15 faculty members, condemning the “illegal, arbitrary measures” taken without due process and calling for dialogue to resolve the situation.

On December 30, 2024, Bhattacharya and three colleagues – Srinivas Burra of the faculty of legal studies, and Irfanullah Farooqi and Ravi Kumar of the department of sociology, faculty of social sciences – received show-cause notices from the university on accusations of making unsubstantiated allegations against the administration and inciting students.

Although they replied to the administration on January 16, 2023, denying the charges, they were suspended six months later, on June 16.

The suspension was challenged in the Delhi high court, which on January 23, 2024, ruled that Bhattacharya’s writ petition was not maintainable for lack of jurisdiction over SAU.

Bhattacharya's appeal before the Delhi high court, challenging the earlier ruling on SAU’s jurisdiction and an August 2025 show-cause notice, remains pending. On September 2, the court listed his appeal for urgent hearing on September 16. On that day, the Delhi high court appointed two amicus curiae counsels while hearing Bhattacharya's appeal, and scheduled the matter for the next hearing on November 18.

Selective targeting

A fact-finding committee, formed by the SAU on March 29, 2023, summoned the four faculty members for an in-person session on May 19, 2023 to probe charges against them.

They were asked to submit written responses the same day, answering between 132 and 236 questions, including on new charges.

“They were warned that leaving questions unanswered could be treated as incriminating and that their responses would constitute evidence. This exercise was unprecedented in academia,” said Tataghat Singh, a former student at SAU and now a PhD scholar at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

“They refused to comply and instead formally requested the questions electronically so they could reply by email, a request the committee rejected,” he added.

In September 2023, the university served ‘charge sheets’ listing 52 charges against Bhattacharya, 71 against Burra, 52 against Kumar and 43 against Farooqi. All four filed detailed replies fully denying the allegations.

The action against the four faculty members was a striking case of targeted scrutiny by the university, which ultimately singled out Bhattacharya and Farooqi.

“On January 10, 2024, I was told that my application for regularisation and promotion, filed on December 4, 2023, would not be processed and that my contract had ended on December 6, 2023,” said Farooqi, who joined SAU in December 2018.

“Because of the suspension, I couldn't access the required records, which the university repeatedly refused to share with me,” he told The Wire.

On February 16, 2024, Bhattacharya wrote to the president that their actions were principled, undertaken in good faith to protect the university's interests without breaching its statutes, and urged revocation of their suspensions.

Kumar and Burra were reinstated on March 11, 2024 after a meeting with the president.

Meanwhile, SAU’s disciplinary committee (DC) continued proceedings against Bhattacharya and Farooqi, even after Farooqi’s contract lapsed. The committee summoned Bhattacharya thrice.

Bhattacharya was denied the DC’s terms of reference and procedural rules despite repeated requests. The committee appeared biased, particularly with the university proctor on it, as many charges stemmed from faculty emails on November 5, 2022 questioning his decisions and arbitrary student expulsions.

On August 18, 2025, Bhattacharya received a show-cause notice for termination without the inquiry report being availed to him, denying him due process and informed response. A part of the DC’s report was shared only on September 1, after the deadline to respond to it had already passed.

He submitted a response on August 30 and an addendum to it on September 2. His termination order of September 11 cited the notice and dismissed his reply as “unsatisfactory and without substance”.

The report leveled 25 charges against Bhattacharya without explaining its conclusions – offering no basis for why some charges were deemed proven while others inconclusive, out of 52 charges initially framed. The report ignored his response submitted on October 5, 2023 denying all charges, and giving no justification for recommending his potential termination.

Challenging SAU’s immunity

In January 2024, the Delhi high court, in two separate pleas, quashed the expulsion orders served to students Bhimraj M., Umesh Joshi and Apoorva Y.K. in November 2022, holding their writ petitions maintainable and ruling that SAU was not immune from legal action in those cases.

This implied that the judgments were in consonance with the content of the emails written by the faculty members over the students' suspensions in 2022, for which they were targeted.

Unlike the high court’s ruling in the students’ cases, the verdict in Bhattacharya’s case held that the court lacked jurisdiction over SAU and dismissed the petition as not maintainable.

In Bhim Raj & Anr. vs South Asian University, the high court distinguished Bhattacharya’s petition, observing that it involved an employment dispute which must be referred to the arbitral tribunal, unlike the former where the right “being sought to be enforced is the right to education which emanates from the public function that the SAU performs”.

The SAU, in its objection to Bhattacharya’s petition, contended that Section 26 (Conditions of Service of Employees) of the South Asian University Act, 2008 and Rule 25.2 (Conditions of Service of Employees), framed by the university’s Standing Committee, confer exclusive jurisdiction on an Arbitral Tribunal to decide disputes arising from employment contracts between the university and its employees.

However, Section 26 of the SAU Act and rule 25.2 merely direct employment disputes to an Arbitral Tribunal; they do not necessarily oust the high court’s writ jurisdiction, Bhattacharya’s lawyer argued in court. Hence, his counsel said that the writ petition can still be heard and decided on its merits rather than dismissed on jurisdictional grounds.

The verdicts on the students’ pleas upheld jurisdiction on merits, saying that the action against the students undermined SAU’s public function, breached natural justice and stripped students of their right to receive education, effectively denying the very public function of the institution of imparting it.

The limits of jurisdictional immunity are further reflected in Section 29 (Protection of action taken in good faith) of the SAU Act, which extends protection only for actions done in ‘good faith’, implying that failure to act within this ambit under the SAU Agreement may be deemed a waiver of the privileges and immunities otherwise granted under the Act.

This was evident in Apoorva Y.K. vs South Asian University, where the Delhi high court held that the manner in which SAU proceeded against her, leading to her expulsion, “cannot be regarded as partaking of ‘good faith’ as understood in law”.

Abhik Chimni, the legal counsel representing Bhattacharya, told The Wire_, “We had originally challenged Snehashish’s suspension, arguing it was completely contrary to the rules and regulations. SAU contested that the court has no jurisdiction over it, citing immunity under United Nations (Privileges and Immunities) Act, 1947.”

The SAU Act, 2008 enacted by parliament pursuant to the UN and headquarters agreements, contains only specific and limited protections under section 14 (Waiver of Privileges and Immunities of Representatives) of the United Nations (Privileges and Immunities) Act, 1947.

Chimni argued that this statute “doesn’t confer immunity from the writ jurisdiction of the courts. There is no basis to infer blanket immunity when your right has been violated by the university”.

‘Immunity is not meant to facilitate impunity’

“Enrolment from other SAARC countries in SAU has fallen sharply, and even Indian applicants no longer see SAU as a first choice,” said Professor Sasanka Perera, chairman of the Colombo Institute for Human Sciences, who formerly taught at SAU and was the founding professor of its sociology department.

He described SAU as “a concentration camp” where students and staff have no rights “because of the woeful abuse of immunity”.

“Immunity is not meant to facilitate impunity,” said Farooqi, arguing that SAU’s legal protections were envisioned in good faith, but have effectively been used for authoritative purposes.

This is attributed to the predominance of Indian officials, from the university’s first vice-president, G.K. Chaddha, to key posts like deputy registrars and finance directors, which has gone unchallenged by the Governing Board despite SAARC representation.

The SAU Act mandates rotational presidency. In its first 13 years, the university has had only two presidents, both Indians, with no formal appointment between 2019 and 2023, until K.K. Aggarwal, the current president, joined in 2023.

“This has turned SAU into an ‘ordinary Indian university’ stripped of its regional character, with the institutionalisation of Hindutva practices as a natural outcome,” Perera said.

Sudipto Das, a fourth-year PhD student from Bangladesh, who was expelled by SAU over allegations of misconduct on July 15, 2025, recalled how he was labelled “anti-national” as a foreign student in the campus.

In 2022, Das, then a second-year PhD student in economics and among five arbitrarily suspended students, was targeted again at SAU on the eve of Maha Shivratri in February 2025, when ABVP members, despite separate fasting meals being arranged, objected to non-vegetarian food in the mess. They allegedly intimidated and assaulted the mess secretary, Yashada Sawant, with Das being on her side.

However, acting on ABVP’s account and citing “hurt religious sentiments”, the administration expelled Das for “serious misconduct” while dismissing Sawant’s complaints against the ABVP members, instead imposing a fine of Rs 5,000 on her.

“What struck me was how the administration dredged up my old social-media posts as evidence, labelling them ‘anti-India’ and ‘anti-administration’ to malign my character,” said Das, who stressed that foreign students are increasingly targeted.

Perera said the trend began with the appointment of the current president, Aggarwal, who, he said, “has empowered a highly parochial leadership with overt Hindutva sympathies”.

Significantly, while SAU is formally outside the purview of the New Education Policy, it has introduced NEP-style courses aimed at an Indian student base, further diluting its original vision. It earlier conducted its own entrance exam but now also admits students through the Common University Entrance Test (CUET).

SAU, former professors and students believe, no longer stands for the ideals of regional diversity and international character on which it was founded.

Syed Affan is a researcher and independent journalist who reports on law, land conflicts and human rights.

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