Himachal Pradesh State Committee of CPM has demanded resignation of the Director of Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Mandi Prof. Lakshmidhar Behera for linking meat eating habits of people of the state with natural disasters.

In a letter written to the IIT Director, copies of which have been sent to Union Human Resource Minister and HP Chief Minister, CPM secretary Dr Onkar Shad said, “The views on meat eating narrated to students of the IIT Mandi by the Director are unscientific, contradictory to professional values and ethics of leadership of a prestigious technology institute, besides mandate of the institute.”  

CPM leader said, “It has been widely reported in the press, wherein Prof. Behera has been exhorting students to take a pledge not to eat meat claiming the incidents of landslides and cloud bursts in Himachal are occurring due to cruelty to animals and if people keep doing this the situation will deteriorate.”

Dr Shad questioned, “ Why did not cloudbursts and landslides of the present magnitude happen for centuries and why only now?; the Director has willfully skirted the issue of climate change, unimaginable rainfall, fragile nature of the Himalayas, anthropogenic causes behind this recent disaster, ignoring carrying capacity of towns, besides reckless cutting of hills for building  four- lanes”, he added.  

The CPM has accused Prof. Behera, “For hurting the feelings of people of the state since the majority of them have been eating meat for centuries, especially from those who have lost houses and property in landslides, flash floods and asked him to seek unconditional apology from the people.”

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2 thoughts on “CPM demands resignation of Director of IIT Mandi for hurting feelings of people of Himachal

  1. The voices being raised by intellectuals and activists against the unscientific views of Director of a High Technology Institute are genuine. He should have proposed to engage some technical team of experts to explore solution to check the natural calamities caused by natural or man-made actions. However, he could not even stop one of the most horrible incident of collective ragging involving large number of students that recently happened at IIT, Mandi, and never happened of that scale in the academic history of Himachal Pradesh. I wonder why Dr Behera couldn’t stop such inhuman incident despite his magical and spiritual powers, as reported elsewhere?

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