Students of University of the Punjab continued protests against IJT’s existence this Monday. This time there were more than 1,500 participants of them who marched within the university premises upto the Vice Chancellor’s office.

Girls and boys were holding banners and playcards with their demands written on them while copies of anti-IJT movement’s objectives were distributed among the students and faculty. The document asked for removal of all political elements from the University’s campus and hostels as well as formation of a neutral students’ body with elected members good in academics as its caretakers.

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Participants of the rally were later joined by some senior professors, deans and directors of different institutes and university departments. Together they staged a sit-in protest in front of the Vice Chancellor’s office and asked for their demands to be fulfilled. The VC came out to deliver a lukewarm speech promising to remove political elements from the prestigious instituion though, did not answer the students’ call to openly speak on Jamiat. This was widely seen as a proof of the VC’s close association with the IJT and JI for he is known as an avid sympathizer of Jamaat himself.

All went safe except for an incident at the University’s Institute of Communication Studies where some members of the faculty including the institute’s director were manhandled and roughed up apparently by the anti-IJT protestors. People are strongly looking at it as a conspiracy by some elements who have joined the anti-IJT movement to create such situations and give this, otherwise a neutral and peaceful movement, a bad label.

Students of the Punjab University have decided to hold protests every Monday and Thursday until the IJT and its influence on campus is totally expelled.