New Delhi: Students arriving at Hansraj College on the morning of 9 February found their campus unrecognisable. Colourful tents had gone up across the lawns. The sports ground, which they had been told to vacate by 5 pm the previous day, was cordoned off. The boys’ hostel, declared unfit for occupation months earlier and emptied of its residents, appeared to be housing guests.
The occasion was the wedding of principal Dr Rama Sharma’s son. A Hindi professor who has run Hansraj for over a decade, Sharma has become a polarising figure on campus. Her every move is scrutinised, contested, and fought over.
There is now a growing litany of grievances against her: her son’s wedding on campus, a gaushala built on land meant for a women’s hostel, and allegations of “data manipulation” in university rankings. The latest flashpoint was the suspension of nearly 30 students over violence at the college fest “Confluence” and “defamatory” social media posts.
Students’ accusations have ranged from treating the campus “like a private estate” to “saffronisation” to running a “dictatorship”. Her political leanings have also raised questions, with some pointing to recent videos of her with Chief Minister Rekha Gupta during a signature campaign for the Nari Shakti Bill. Across DU, sections of students say the line between the principal’s office and party platform is beginning to blur, whether at Hansraj or Lady Shri Ram College, where students protested last month over the principal appearing in a BJP video.
Through the storm, Sharma has been unflappable. In the deep contralto voice with which she has commanded classes since 1991, she dismisses criticisms of undemocratic conduct.
“People say that it is a democracy. I agree. But if students would protest about their classes not being held, about the lack of water facilities, about the lack of infrastructure, or about the fans not working during summers, then I would consider it to be genuine,” said Sharma, whose faculty page on the college website credits her as the author or editor of no fewer than 31 books, several of them related to her specialisation in Hindi language, literature, and mass media.
One of the most fractious moments this year was the wedding. While Hansraj staff are permitted to use college premises for personal functions after hours, students claimed this particular event had forced the cancellation of the annual Khelo Hansraj sports tournament, scheduled from 4 to 27 February. They also alleged that the hostel, closed for months after being deemed “unfit for living”, was used to accommodate wedding guests. About 200 students protested on 9 February.
Sharma was unapologetic. She said permission to host events was a facility accorded to all staff as a form of “goodwill”.
“Even if I wasn’t a principal here, I would be allowed to use the college premises to conduct private events… from the cook to the chairman, everyone is welcome to hold the weddings of their immediate family members,” she said.
The college does not belong to any political leaning but those who keep a good vision for Hansraj College, who motivate the kids, are always welcomed. But those who have a negative way of thinking for the college, who misguide the kids, they will be barred from entering the college premises. Our only ideology is Hansraj
-Rama Sharma
The principal also vehemently denied “false claims” that hostel students were displaced for the event.
“Is it possible that I could have gotten the hostel emptied only for marriage purposes? The hostel couldn’t have been shut overnight — if we are saying that we want to dismantle the hostel, then obviously we would have had a tender issued, there are other procedures that need to be followed too. I have been a part of this college for the last 40 years. It’s not that I joined yesterday and wouldn’t know its rules and regulations,” she said, adding that no sports event had been cancelled on account of the wedding. ThePrint confirmed that the sports event was held, but was paused for three days from 9 to 11 February.
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New Hansraj and a nemesis
This year, the wedding was the opening note in a crescendo of dissatisfaction that peaked during the Confluence fest face-off last month. But trouble had been brewing well before this, with multiple flashpoints along the way.
Students and faculty claim the core issue is the “steady centralisation of authority” at one of Delhi University’s largest colleges, apart from friction over ideological and political alignment.
Under Sharma, the culture of Hansraj has been recalibrated. Daily chants are now broadcast at 7 am and 5 pm, with Om Bhoorbhuvaswa playing over college speakers. The canteen, once a go-to for its bread-omelettes, no longer serves non-vegetarian food, and neither does the hostel mess.
Even the names given to college hangouts are being contested. In early April, open-air gym equipment appeared at ‘Lovers Point’, or LP— an open seating area near the college canteen that’s become a legendary social hub. It is here that Shah Rukh Khan, who studied at Hansraj in the 1980s, reportedly proposed to Gauri Chhibber.
Students say the gym was funded by student welfare money they had no say in deploying.
Sharma, however, disavowed the history associated with this space.
“There is no Lovers Point in Hansraj College—that is our Learning Point,” she told ThePrint, adding that the installation was a matter of simple logistics. “The indoor gym couldn’t accommodate more apparatus, which is why we decided to make an outdoor gym.”
If Sharma has a nemesis, it is Parth Shrivastava, president of the college students’ union until last year. The BA Philosophy student from Jaipur, who is set to graduate in June, came to the fore as the primary auditor of Sharma’s administration. He has used the Right to Information (RTI) Act to probe everything from the college’s Covid-19 fund to its leap in national rankings to the use of campus facilities for the wedding.
Disciplinary action was initiated against him in February, which he called “vindictive”. He was suspended in March in a notice signed by Sharma and posted on the Hansraj website, for “indiscipline” as well as “defamation of the institution and use of derogatory language”.
Apart from Shrivastava, several other students have been suspended in recent weeks, including those accused of violence and disorder during Confluence on 8 and 9 April and another incident on 15 April. Another group of seven students was suspended for allegedly defaming the college on social media. The Hansraj administration has since filed an FIR against 17 students for the violence during the fest.
As of this week, 19 of the 30 initial suspensions have been revoked, while the review committee has stayed the others. Shrivastava is the exception.
“I am the only one to be suspended at the moment,” he said.
Parth Shrivastava has also moved court over the wedding controversy. On 29 April, the Delhi High Court directed Hansraj College to file an affidavit explaining how permission was granted for the use of college grounds for a private wedding. The court has also given the college two weeks to respond and submit a record of past instances where the venue was used for non-academic events by former principals and members of the faculty. The matter is next scheduled to be heard on 11 May.
Sharma, meanwhile, describes her style of governance as hands-on and maternal, rather than authoritarian. She often refers to the students as her “own” children.
“I am a principal who stays on the college campus from morning till night,” she said. “I am not someone who stays inside. I don’t call them students—for me, they are like my own kids.”
Who is Rama Sharma?
Before Rama Sharma, Hansraj had long been defined by what one faculty member describes as an ‘old boys’ club’: a succession of male principals, often Punjabi, often from science, mathematics, or economics backgrounds.
Sharma broke both moulds. When she was formally appointed in September 2018, after three years as officiating principal, she became the first woman and the first faculty member from the Hindi department to lead the college.
Born in 1965, Sharma specialises in Hindi literature and mass media, with seven degrees to her credit, including a BA and MA from Janki Devi Memorial College, an MPhil and PhD from the University of Delhi, post-MA diplomas in linguistics and translation from the Central Hindi Institute, and a journalism degree from Kota Open University.
She was the strongest contender at the time — fully qualified, widely published, and deeply familiar with the college
-Senior faculty member at Hansraj College
Known as a skilled orator, she had a stint in journalism, including for Doordarshan and Akashwani, before joining the Hansraj faculty in 1991 and then steadily rising in the ranks. No one questioned her readiness for the principal job.
“She was the strongest contender at the time — fully qualified, widely published, and deeply familiar with the college,” a senior faculty member said.
But she also has her share of detractors in the faculty. A colleague who has known her since before she took charge claimed that it was Sharma’s facility with navigating social terrains that served her best.
“In her time as a teaching staff, she was known less for her lectures and more for organising college events,” the faculty member said.
And in the last few years, more serious charges from colleagues have emerged as well.
It is not just her public statements or her use of facilities that are being questioned. Routine administrative decisions are being contested too. Faculty members describe a breakdown in transparency regarding leave approvals and permissions.
“Who gets and who doesn’t get a CCL or extraordinary leave — there is no clarity anymore,” one faculty member said.
Requests to attend national and international conferences, some staff allege, are summarily declined, while closed-door disciplinary meetings are reportedly held without minutes. CCTV cameras have proliferated across campus, framed by some staff less as safety infrastructure than as surveillance.
“Earlier, protests were welcomed. People were heard. Even higher authorities were answerable,” one professor said. “Over the years, it has been degrading drastically.”
A professor in the English department described a decline in the college’s intellectual climate.
“The department has been relegated to Outer Darkness — not because faculty are being formally deprived of benefits, but because a certain kind of suspicious gaze has settled on liberal arts, particularly on those whose politics are legible as left or independent,” he alleged. “The new regime looks at English and history with a suspicious gaze.”
Scientific research and commerce are accorded more value than humanities, according to some faculty members, while others claim academic focus is wavering in favour of unrelated events.
Ours is a DAV Trust college, and its base is the Arya Samaj. In line with that tradition, we hold a havan on the first day of every month. For this, every month, we need to go to the market to buy the things we needed, such as pure ghee. We can be self-sufficient now [with a gaushala]
-Rama Sharma
“The college has turned into an amphitheatre of programmes that have little to do with academics,” a senior faculty member said. “Students are indirectly forced to attend them. A student is already booked from 8:40 am to 5 pm. To attend these programmes in between is not justified.”
Gaushala and ‘saffronisation’
Of all the changes under Sharma, none has attracted more sustained attention than the Swami Dayanand Saraswati Gau-Samvardhan evam Anusandhan Kendra. The bovine protection and research centre was inaugurated in 2022 with a single cow, on land originally allotted for the women’s hostel. There are now three cows on campus.
The setting-up of the gaushala was the first major flashpoint of Sharma’s tenure. The Students’ Federation of India unit at Hansraj called it “an attempt at saffronisation of educational institutions,” noting that the college had finished construction of a full-fledged gaushala while the campus was shut and full fees were still being demanded from students.
Delhi University registrar Vikas Gupta told The Indian Express at the time that he had not been informed of the project at all, and that it must have been “an initiative taken at the college’s level.”
Sharma remains unmoved by these critiques, defending the centre as a return to the college’s foundational values. Products from the cows, she said, were helpful for carrying out institutional traditions.
No one knows about the outcome of that research centre — whether there was any research paper published, whether there was any actual outcome
-Parth Shrivastava, Hansraj College BA student
“Ours is a DAV Trust college, and its base is the Arya Samaj. In line with that tradition, we hold a havan on the first day of every month. For this, every month, we need to go to the market to buy the things we needed, such as pure ghee. We can be self-sufficient now,” she said.
She had earlier also spoken of plans for a gobar gas plant and of “pure milk and pure curd” for the students.
Four years on, what the centre has actually produced by way of research is still unclear.
“No one knows about the outcome of that research centre — whether there was any research paper published, whether there was any actual outcome,” Shrivastava said.
Too good to be true?
A separate front opened when Hansraj climbed to Rank 3 in the NIRF 2025 rankings, behind only Hindu College and Miranda House, and ahead of St Stephen’s. While Hansraj credited upgraded infrastructure and a better student-teacher ratio, the leap from Rank 12 the year before raised eyebrows.
In March, Delhi University Students’ Union (DUSU) vice president Rahul Jhansla Yadav alleged data manipulation.
“Our verification of more than 70 faculty members has already flagged 29 discrepancies, which indicate clear violations of NIRF norms,” he said in a statement.
Yadav also released a detailed report to back his claims. It noted that the faculty count appeared to have increased from around 230 in the college’s NAAC 2022 records to over 300 in its NIRF 2025 submission.
When Hansraj had moved from the 9th rank to the 12th rank, there was no issue. But when we have reached the 3rd rank, people have an issue with that
-Rama Sharma
Further, it said, 26 ad hoc or contractual faculty had been included despite joining only in 2023 or 2024, violating an NIRF requirement that faculty must have taught both semesters of 2023-24. Some of those listed as Hansraj faculty, the DUSU office alleged, were simultaneously serving permanently at other institutions.
The DUSU statement also alleged that the ranking may have contributed to the college securing a loan of approximately Rs 167 crore from the Higher Education Financing Agency.
Sharma hinted that it seemed to be a case of sour grapes.
“When Hansraj had moved from the 9th rank to the 12th rank, there was no issue. But when we have reached the 3rd rank, people have an issue with that,” she said.
As for the data itself, she insisted that submissions had followed protocol.
“When we are about to get a promotion, or when we apply for employment somewhere, we write as many things as possible, but the employer takes only those things as per his requirement, so it cannot be possible that we did not follow the NIRF procedures,” she added.
The college has not publicly addressed every element of the claims. When Shrivastava filed an RTI seeking clarity on the data, his suspension notice arrived not long after.
A confluence of troubles
By the time preparations for Confluence 2026 began, the campus was already taut with unresolved grievances.
Three months before the fest, the student union had been told to raise sponsorships and book an artist within its budget. It raised approximately Rs 12 lakh and began talks with singer Navjot Ahuja. But days before the 8-9 April dates, the administration reversed course, citing discipline concerns.
Members of the student union claimed that the principal then imposed a condition that they say had no precedent in DU: the union must sign a memorandum of understanding accepting full responsibility if anything went wrong during the fest.
“This has never happened in the history of the college. Never has a principal said that I will not take responsibility for what happens, that it is your responsibility because you are the union,” Shrivastava said.
Students staged a 20-hour overnight sit-in, and the administration eventually gave in. Victory, however, was short-lived.
On 9 April, the final day of the fest, chaos broke out just before the headline performance by singer Vilen. Videos showed students and outsiders engaged in physical fights near Gate No 5 and C Block, with chairs and tables thrown. One unofficial DU students’ page alleged that bricks from the gaushala and the hostel renovation were among the objects thrown. Rumours of a stabbing spread on social media but were denied by the Delhi Police.
In the meantime, Shrivastava posted audio clips on social media on Sunday that purportedly featured Sharma making derogatory remarks about female students during a closed-door meeting over their decision to protest overnight in a predominantly male gathering. The recordings are still on his Instagram account.
Sharma did not engage with the substance of the recordings but questioned the propriety of releasing them.
I am a principal who stays on the college campus from morning till night. I am not someone who stays inside. I don’t call them students—for me, they are like my own kids
-Rama Sharma
“If an official meeting is taking place behind closed doors, should it be recorded without being informed? And even if it has been recorded and then you are posting it on social media, then it should be the full thing,” she said.
The crackdown from the college administration came two weeks after the incident.
An FIR was registered on 24 April against several Hansraj students after Sharma filed a complaint. They were booked under BNS sections related to trespass and voluntarily causing hurt. Between 20 and 25 April, the college administration also issued five rounds of suspension notices. At least 30 students were suspended on charges ranging from violence and misconduct during the fest to “acts of defaming the college through social media platforms.”
The four elected office-bearers of the student union — president, vice president, secretary, and joint secretary — were named in the final notice on 25 April. Among the individual charges levelled was giving interviews to student media.
“That is not a strong enough ground to suspend someone and certainly not without giving them a chance to explain,” said advocate Shaurya Vikram, who represents Shrivastava.
For Sharma, the true punishment of incidents such as this is borne by the administration rather than the students, justifying the need for an MoU in the first place.
“What happened after we called the artists is now in front of everyone. Ultimately, who is going to be questioned? It’s not going to be the students who are protesting but the administration instead,” she said.
As for the suspensions, she described them as lenient since the students had been suspended and not rusticated.
“I just hope that god gives them wisdom to do better in their lives,” she said. “This is really little punishment. They can still appear for their exams, they can still do their academic work.”
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Who is welcome, who is not
For sections of students and faculty, the series of rows at Hansraj has become a test of Delhi University’s political and intellectual climate. Some draw parallels with Lady Shri Ram College, where students recently protested against the principal over alleged surveillance and overt political affinities.
At Hansraj, the charge is not only that dissent is being punished, but that access to the campus itself has become selective.
Multiple sources allege that students affiliated with NSUI or SFI who attempt to enter campus face obstruction or are handed to police, while ABVP members are allowed through without checks.
“Whenever NSUI wants to enter campus, they are prohibited. SFI wants to enter campus, they are thrown to the police. But if ABVP enters the college then there are no checks, no balances, no stopping,” Vikram said.
Being selective is good for the health of Hansraj, according to Sharma.
“The college does not belong to any political leaning but those who keep a good vision for Hansraj College, who motivate the kids, they are always welcomed. But those who have a negative way of thinking for the college, who misguide the kids to spoil their future, they will be barred from entering the college premises. Our only ideology is Hansraj,” she said.
Sharma’s institutional alignments have surfaced more than once. Last week, she joined Delhi BJP chief Virendra Sachdeva and Bhagini Nivedita College principal Ruby Mishra for a press conference to criticise opposition parties for scuppering the Women’s Reservation Bill. She also appeared in videos with Delhi Chief Minister Rekha Gupta on the same issue. Among the women from Delhi University featured in official capacities were Sharma, Nimrit Kaur from SRCC, Anjum Shrivastava from Hindu College, and Deepika Jha, an ABVP-affiliated DUSU office-bearer.
Faculty members pointed out that distinguished women faculty at Miranda House, among others, were absent from these events because they do not engage politically.
“It’s not just this college where this kind of thing is happening. Many colleges in DU are experiencing it. But here it has become very visible. And the people who have the ability to see beyond it are also being careful,” said the professor from the English department.
There is now, some faculty members say, a fear of being penalised for asking the wrong questions or voicing concerns.
“The Hansraj that I knew 20 years back is very different from how it is now,” sighed a professor.
Meanwhile, as the dust settled on the Confluence controversy, Hansraj held its farewell dinner for the 2026 batch on Thursday. The rules on the digital invite were the usual: formals for boys, sarees for girls, and college ID cards for all. But this time, there was another warning: suspended students would not be allowed.
It applied to one person. Shrivastava told ThePrint he was “heartbroken”, but on the card, he scrawled a defiant note: “Only suspended student in whole college—Parth Shrivastava. Hahahaha.”
(Edited by Asavari Singh)