The Delhi High Court on Wednesday suggested that “outsiders” should be prevented from entering the Jawaharlal Nehru University for things to “improve” on campus, PTI reported. Justice Sanjeev Sachdeva, who was hearing an appeal by the university authorities to prevent students from staging a demonstration within 100 metres of the administrative block, said, “We have to close the campus to students of other universities. If the JNU campus is closed for outsiders, things will improve.”

“For the last many years, JNU has been known for its own culture inside the campus. It has never allowed others to interfere in its functioning. Today, however, outsiders are more active on this campus,” the court noted.

The Delhi High Court’s observations comes a few days after Union Human Resources Development Minister Prakash Javadekar took a dig at JNU and Jadavpur University for securing top spots on the India Rankings 2017 released by the National Institutional Ranking Framework. Javadekar had claimed that the two universities featured on the list because of strong research output and not because of students shouting “pro-Afzal Guru” and “anti-India” slogans on campus.