Monday last, the canal road and its connecting busy streets saw some terrifying scenes when the highly charged activists of Islami Jamiat Talaba (IJT), the student wing of Jamaat-e-Islami (JI), seized the keys of the vehicles plying on the roads and caused massive traffic jams. The activists also set on fire a public transport bus carrying commuters after forcibly removing the people.

The activists, mostly the students of Punjab University (PU) which has been the IJT stronghold for the past several decades, were protesting against the lodging of police cases by the university administration against their workers.

The incident, according to the PU administration, follows a score of incidents where the administration tried to stop the students from interfering in the university’s policies and decisions. A more recent one was when the varsity asked the cafeteria contractor of Law College to pay its remaining dues and the IJT activists (allegedly) came to the rescue of the proprietor of the canteen.

"The cafeteria proprietor was a defaulter of Rs 120,000 and the activists were backing him against the varsity administration," says university spokesperson Khurrum Shahzad. "They also beat up two teachers on the spot."

Later, the university took stern action against the activists and lodged cases with the police. Additionally, the IJT also started protesting the vacation of a boys’ hostel (Hostel number 16) and allotting it to girls. The IJT resisted the decision and refused to vacate the hostel for which the university called in police and forcibly removed the activists from the hostel, he says.

Presently, as many as 21 students and the IJT activists involved in these incidents have been arrested whereas several have been presented the statement of allegation by the administration. Nobody can take law into their hands, he maintains.

Punjab University has a history of ‘activism’ by the IJT workers and is known to be one of the base camps of the organisation where the workers practise their agenda and (allegedly) force it on others at a campus where the number of students at present is at least 25,000. The IJT promotes its ideology which is close to many other extremist religious groups.

Public universities are still considered the recruitment grounds for such right-wing groups, mainly the IJT. The PU spokesman says such elements are not interested in studies and education but they torture teachers and indulge in extortion, vandalism, car theft and other heinous crimes.

This September, the Punjab police raided one of the PU hostels and arrested an Al-Qaeda member who was living on campus as a guest of an alleged IJT activist cum student. In a November drone strike, reportedly, one of the old students of NED University was also killed who had been associated with the IJT for some years. In a recent public statement, Syed Munawwar Hassan, the chief of the JI (the parent organisation of the IJT), declared the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) leader Hakimullah Mehsud, who had been killed in a drone strike, as a martyr and termed Pakistani soldiers as being on the wrong side.

Interestingly, the IJT enjoys a considerable support of the PU faculty and administration as the latter are said to have affiliations with the group since their own times as students on the campus. Today, the IJT, allegedly, tried to run a kind of a parallel administration obviously meant to enforce its own agenda," says one PU teacher, requesting not to be named.

"The present administration of the university is not pro students," says Abdul Muqeet, the sitting Nazim of the IJT in the PU. "The IJT raises its voice for students’ rights and that is why they do not like us.

"We are calling for new hostels and more buses for students, which is not a bad demand, is it? But we are being criticised and victimised for highlighting these issues."

Abdul Muqeet also says the IJT activists were not involved in the cafeteria business, they were only protesting the (alleged) "immoral activities" of some of the teachers at the Law College.

He also says the university has got six marriage lawns in its grounds but is not willing to build new hostels. "If there is evidence against us, the administration must produce it before the press!"

Eventually, the stand-off between the IJT and the PU is not new. There have been incidents in the past where the university controlled the annual book fair arranged by the IJT and managed to hold it under the umbrella of the university administration.

"They use religion as a tool to suffocate the environment on the campus," says Memoona Ahmad, a student at PU. "They are good when they talk about students’ rights but they become ugly the moment they try to impose their own ideology and agenda on students and force them to follow certain codes."

The environment of the campus is tense. The students are generally hesitant to share their stories for fear of a backlash. "We are the real victims of the tussle," says Muhammad Abid, a Masters student. "Sometimes the administration has no choice but to compromise, in which case we continue to face their pressure and influence."

The university is in the grip of the IJT since 1970s. The IJT also allegedly forces the students (boys and girls) to not mix with each other. In 2005-06, the then Punjab governor Lt Gen (r) Khalid Maqbool tried his best to help the situation and stop the segregation of boys and girls in classrooms in different departments but he could not.

Dr Muhammad Wassem, political scientist, thinks the "IJT and other groups have weakened gradually but the public universities are still their stronghold because of the presence of mostly middle and lower middle classes.

"They { the IJT activists) cannot be fully controlled unless strict law and order is maintained by the administration and a free environment of unions is created to check their popularity which, in my view, has decreased anyway."

The IJT denies all charges. "Neither we impose our agenda on others nor do we have any links with any extremist group," asserts Amjad Bukhari, Central Information Secretary IJT.

Amjad says that if somebody has been associated with the IJT for some time and later decides to leave, the organisation is not responsible for their actions for the rest of their life. Those Al-Qaeda activists who were arrested or killed in drone strikes were former members of the IJT but they left us several months ago, he adds.