JNU Vice Chancellor Santishree Pandit Denies Having Twitter Account, Calls It A Conspiracy

A Twitter account under the name of the new vice-chancellor of Jawaharlal Nehru University had come under fire shortly after her appointment earlier this week. The account allegedly tweeted derogatory remarks against Christians, anti-CAA protesters, amongst others. Santishree Dhulipudi Pandit, who is the first woman to be appointed to the said post, has now said that she doesn't even have a social media account, calling the entire fiasco a "conspiracy.

A day after the controversy over her tweets blew up on social media, the unverified account going by her name @SantishreeD was deleted. Clarifying that the regressive tweets in the account's feed were not hers, Pandit said that she "never had" a Twitter account. One such alleged tweet from the handle in May last year had "rice bag convert" written in it, which is a slur used against members of the Christian community in India.

According to the screenshot of another tweet shared by Mohammed Zubair, the co-founder of fact-checking site Alt News, the handle referred to anti-CAA women protesters at Shaheen Bagh as "illegal jihadis." The tweets also called education institutes Jamia Millia Islamia and St Stephen's College "communal campuses."

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Following an uproar, Pandit clarified that the account in question did not belong to her. To Indian Express, she said, "I didn't have a Twitter account...It has been found out that it has been hacked and somebody internally from JNU has done this. The point is, many people are unhappy that I am first woman VC."

Following her appointment as the VC of JNU, tweets posted under the account went viral, and its followers grew from 500 to at least 5000 in a day. But was later deleted.

Pandit further said that her daughter is a cyber-security engineer and six years ago when she was applying to jobs in the United States, she had said, "Mom, you are not going to be on any social media sites." So, according to Pandit, she was never on one.

The news of a Twitter account like this existing by her name did not even come to her notice, she alleged until she found out about the tweets circulating online. She said that nobody informed her and that everybody in this world is a "conspirator."

According to Pandit, she was being attacked because firstly she is the first woman VC and secondly because of her views on the "Indian perspective." "The Cholas, Marathas, Vijaynagar empire, Cheras, Pandya--where are they? How much percentage is written in history? See history is agenda-setting. I don't blame them for it; I don't want to go into it. So if they can set an agenda, what is wrong in correcting history?" she said.