Protest over film shoot at Bharathiar

COIMBATORE: Visitors to the Bharathiar University here on Tuesday morning were left perplexed as new boards had been put up in the campus which read Indira Gandhi College for Women. The front gates were closed and staff and students were asked to enter the campus through side entrances. There was also an unusually large crowd outside the campus. It took a while for the staff and students to realize that their campus had been turned into a site for a cinema shoot.Soon, half-a-dozen generators purred into life and the lights were switched on. Soon it was action time.
That's when the staff and students realized that the university authorities had given the campus on rent for the unit of Sashikumar-starrer, Brahman, for a day. A campus seen was being shot and hence the university boards had been covered and new boards announcing the Indira Gandhi College put up. When a section of teachers and students protested, the administration passed the buck on to the vice chancellor James Pitchai who is presently touring China. When reporters called in to seek details of the shoot, including how much was the university's rent for a day's shoot, officials did the same. They just told the media: Ask VC.
C Pichandy of Association of University Teachers (AUT) said the university should allow cinema shoots and other non-core activities only on holidays and that too without causing disturbance to the staff and students. University officials later justified their action saying only very few students were present in the campus and formal classes were yet to begin.
Meanwhile, the film crew objected to news photographers who had gathered at the campus trying to photograph the shoot. When security guards intervened, photographers protested. Finally, university staff intervened and pacified both groups.
In between, some environmentalists turned up at the scene protesting the shoot since the campus borders the foothills of the Western Ghats. They claimed that the gen sets, powerful lights and sound systems would disturb the nearly 200-strong peacock population in the campus. They also alleged that the crew had littered the campus with waste materials like eatable items, plastic cups and other unwanted materials.
Nature Conservation Society President N I Jalaluddin, who was present during the ruckus, said the campus has a large number of peacocks, rare birds, rabbits, and other reptiles. He said, according to the Wildlife Act, shooting should not be allowed even close to reserve forest area, since the wildlife would be disturbed.
However, the shooting continued till the afternoon before the unit packed up.