Uprooting the Anti Student Face Recognition System. A Collective Struggle fought and won by the Student Community!
The JNUSU has successfully uprooted the anti student face recognition system from the JNU Library. This is a clear victory for the students of JNU who refused to allow surveillance and exclusion to take root on our campus. The removal of this system is the result of collective resistance and firm opposition to every attempt to undermine our rights and freedoms.
This intervention became necessary because the chief librarian Manorama Tripathi continued her tactics with complete disregard for the students of this university. The previous JNUSU was assured that a committee would be formed and that students would be consulted before any decision was taken. The committee was never set up. Not a single discussion was held. The assurance was used as a delay tactic while work on the system continued quietly in the background.
Students were repeatedly asked to submit their data to feed the machine. Emails were sent again and again as if consent had already been granted. The administration behaved as though the system was permanent and unavoidable. The chief librarian kept campaigning for the face recognition system and she never once conferred with the student union. She presented the system as a technical upgrade while ignoring the fact that it directly affects student rights and the democratic character of our campus.
At the centre of this struggle is the question of access. A university library must remain open to students, researchers and the larger academic community. Leading universities across the world welcome people from outside their campuses because knowledge belongs to a wider intellectual and cultural commons. A simple registration on entry is acceptable because it helps track usage and plan facilities but it does not block entry. A face recognition system becomes a barrier. It decides who belongs and who does not. It restricts access rather than expanding it. Such a system harms those who depend on the library after graduation and it reduces a public university to a closed and exclusionary space.
We call upon the students of JNU to reject every attempt by the administration to turn this campus into a controlled and dictatorial space. The library is not a checkpoint. It is a collective space created and protected by generations of students who fought for equality and access. We will not allow any authority to impose systems that undermine these values.
JNUSU remains committed to defending the rights of students and to preserving JNU as a space of openness and inclusion. The administration must understand that students will resist every move that restricts access or violates democratic principles. We have won this battle today and we will continue to resist all future attempts to impose this system again.
