Ashoka University's political data centre board dissolves itself after founder 'forced to leave'

Ashoka University waded into a fresh controversy after the members of the Trivedi Centre Scientific Board alleged that the varsity forced psephologist and professor Gilles Vernier out. In an open letter, members of the Board, which was founded by Vernier, disbanded it in protest.

The open letter was signed by academics Christophe Jaffrelot, Francesca Jensenius, Milan Vaishnav, Mukulika Banerjee, Susan Ostermann, and Tariq Thachil, besides former Chief Election Commissioner SY Quraishi, all of whom are members of the Board.

In the letter, the signatories said that the Trivedi Centre changed the scenario which was plagued by limited publicly available data by providing quality open-access data in real time.

“TCPD’s vibrant and important agenda, under the leadership of founding Director Professor Gilles Verniers, is what attracted each of us to serve on its Scientific Board… We now write to state our regret that the Centre’s founder and director was forced to leave, and that the university did not inform the Centre’s scientific board about decisions that affect not only the leadership of the Centre but also its future as an institution,” the letter reads.

The letter says that in the seven years of its existence, the Trivedi Centre produced “16 groundbreaking datasets, led 20 research projects, organized 80 research seminars, published 20 research papers and book chapters, and organized two major conferences on computational social sciences”. In 2017, it was awarded the ‘International Research Partner’ from the Centre for National Scientific Research (CNRS) in France, in association with CERI-SciencesPo, it added.

"Given this track record of excellence, we were surprised and disappointed that we, as the Scientific Board, were not consulted before substantial changes were made governing how the Centre is run and situated within its home institution, in breach of academic norms. Under such circumstances, we, signatories of this letter, are dissolving TCPD’s Scientific board,” the signatories said.

This is the second time in two months that the varsity has faced controversy. Last month, Ashoka courted another altercation after faculty member Sabyasachi Das authored a research paper indicating irregularities in the BJP’s 2019 Lok Sabha victory. Das soon left the varsity, which led to several faculty members writing to the governing council that they will not teach students unless the decision is taken back. Another faculty member Pulapre Balakrishnan, too, put in his papers.