HCU students' agitation after Rohith's death funded by Cong, Left: Former SFI leader

Raj Kumar Sahu, a Left-affiliated Students' Federation of India leader at Hyderabad Central University who resigned on Thursday has alleged that the on-going protests against the university authorities after the suicide of Dalit scholar Rohith Vemula are funded by the Congress and Left parties and have "become opportunistic."

After Sahu's resignation letter, BJP minister M Venkaiah Naidu tweeted: "HCU students union secretary resigns and makes startling revelations. Left and Congress role exposed in Rohith Vemula's episode. They need to apologize to the nation."

Dalit scholar Rohith Vemula, 26, hanged himself on 17 January this year. A month before he committed suicide, he had written to university vice chancellor Appa Rao Podile about caste discrimination, according to NDTV.

Since Vemula's death, HCU students have been agitating for the dismissal of Appa Rao and for action against union ministers Smriti Irani and Bandarau Dattatreya, who they accuse of harassing Vemula.

In his resignation letter, Sahu said that the "present state of affairs at SFI, HCU is murky," and "the politics of SFI is opportunistic and not based on principles."