Sonipat: The Haryana Human Rights Commission (HHRC) has sought a response from the Sonipat-based OP Jindal Global University after a student alleged “harassment” and “discriminatory conduct” by two faculty members, including Associate Professor Sarover Zaidi, who has now been suspended.
In an order dated 19 February, the HHRC directed the university’s registrar to appear in person, or depute a senior official to present facts before the agency, at the next hearing scheduled for 13 May.
This came after Vishav Bajaj filed a complaint with the HHRC last month, alleging that his son Vikhyaat, a student at the university, faced “continuous harassment, humiliation, and discriminatory conduct” by Professor Zaidi and Assistant Professor Ekta Chauhan, purportedly because of differences in “political views” with them.
Professor Zaidi has consequently been suspended for a semester.
ThePrint reached both professors through email for a comment, but there was no response. The report will be updated if and when they respond.
Who is Professor Zaidi
Professor Zaidi has been an associate professor in the university’s Jindal School of Art and Architecture (now called the Jindal School of Design and Architecture) since 2018.
Earlier, she was a faculty member at the School of Planning and Architecture, Delhi. She also worked as a Guest Lecturer for a course on Religion and Society at the Ambedkar University, Delhi, and designed and taught a course on Sufism and Islam at the Jnanapravaha, Mumbai. She has received the Max Planck fellowship, the INTACH fellowship, the IFA fellowship, and the Khoj fellowship for her research interests.
Some of her students told ThePrint she is strongly opinionated and always stands by her ideology. But she is always open, according to them, to discuss divergent perspectives with her students. Speaking on the condition of anonymity, the students also claimed her differences of opinion with students never manifested as tensions in class. They do not reflect in how they were treated in class or how they were graded, said one student.
What does complaint say
According to the sequence of events mentioned in the complaint, on 31 October 2025, Vikhyaat Bajaj wrote an essay on the film ‘Uri : The Surgical Strike’, which his teachers did not like.
On 3 November, he was allegedly “harassed”. On 7 November, in Professor Zaidi’s class on a course titled Politics of Representation, the student was allegedly “deliberately targeted” and “victimised” by “certain professors holding particular political views,” according to the complaint.
The father informed the HHRC that his son also alleged that Professor Zaidi’s remarks in class that day were “politically derogatory, inflammatory, and deeply disturbing in nature”.
Among other things, she allegedly drew comparisons between PM Narendra Modi and Adolf Hitler, and called “national security operations” marketing gimmicks and branding exercises, according to the complaint.
At the university, an enquiry was also conducted into the student’s complaint, when the content of his essay was deemed unacceptable by his teachers and he was declared failed in the course.
Later, Executive Dean Badrinarayan found the result unjustified, and the result was reversed.
All of these events, it is alleged, culminated in Professor Zaidi and Professor Chauhan developing “enmity” towards the student, his father has claimed.
On 29 November, the student was accused of plagiarism during a jury review and was once again declared failed. The complaint claims that there was an inadvertent error in the student’s documents, which was “exaggerated and turned into a major issue”.
As a result, the complainant says, his son is “presently suffering from mental and physical distress and is living under constant fear of retaliation, academic failure and institutional victimisation”.
(Edited by Ajeet Tiwari)
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