The Ministry of Education on Monday appointed Santishree Dhulipudi Pandit as the vice-chancellor of Jawaharlal Nehru University, making her the first woman to hold the post.
She is currently a political science professor at the Department of Politics and Public Administration at Savitribai Phule University in Maharashtra.
The 59-year-old Pandit is also an alumni of JNU where she pursued her MPhil as well as PhD in International Relations.
Meanwhile, old tweets criticising JNU students and farmers, purportedly posted by a Twitter account carrying Pandit's name, were shared widely on social media. The tweets from an unverified account, which carried Pandit's name, made references to Sharjeel Imam and Nathuram Godse, among others.
While there was no confirmation whether or not it was Pandit's account, the social media handle was taken down hours later.
According to a report from The Wire, Pandit while responding to a comment by Times Now editor Rahul Shivshankar’s the Left-liberals as “Jihadis.”
On other occasions, she has also urged “non-Muslims” to prevent “Love Jihad”, which according to her qualifies as “terror by other means”.
According to the report, Pandit had also recently termed agitating farmers “parasites, middlemen, Dalals,” and had used similar terms for anti-CAA protesters.
In another of her tweets, she has justified Mahatma Gandhi's assassination by calling it a “solution” for a “united India.”
Check out some of her tweets here:
