Imphal, April 01 2009: The 24 hour general strike call given by the 'JAC against the brutal killing of Dr Kishan, Y Token and A Rajen' has evoked strong condemnation from DESAM and AMSU as it has not said anything about exempting educational institutions from the purview of the strike.

Reacting to the JAC's agitation call beginning from midnight today, the student bodies voiced opposition to any form of movement that undermines education or disrupts academic activities.

Speaking to the media at the head office of DESAM today, AMSU president Jamesbond Mangang urged candidates appearing in examinations as well as teachers/ invigilators to attend to their respective tasks without any inhibition despite the general strike call.

Moreover, he urged school authorities and the students to attend classes as usual during the strike period asserting that joint inspection teams of AMSUDESAM would visit educational institutions to assess whether classes are being conducted.

Those institutions found defying the AMSU-DESAM appeal through class cancellation would evoke appropriate action, the AMSU president cautioned.

While expressing that formation of JACs and resorting to bandh/general strike agitations to denounce killing or other inhuman acts would not yield the desired consequences, he, nevertheless assured cooperation and assistance of the student bodies to any other form of agitation that would not disrupt activities concerning education.

Joining the media briefing, DESAM's general secretary Y Ratankumar opined that even though a large of families had been effected by fake encounters and other foreseen incidents in the State such events would persist and continue to haunt the people and expressed resentment that relying merely on disruptive agitation to highlight grievances would only cause derailment of the education system in the State.

Strongly advocating movement that would spare the student community, he also flayed failure of the State and central Government authorities to initiate punitive action against those NSCN (IM) cadres involved in the killing of Dr Kishan, Rajen and Token.

Ratankumar further asked the Govt to act promptly on the issue rather than test tolerance of the masses.

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