The newly appointed Vice-Chancellor at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), Santishree Dhulipadi Pandit, told NDTV on Tuesday that she had never been on Twitter.

The statement comes after old tweets from an account in her name faced flak for their controversial content. The handle @SantishreeD was immediately deactivated after opposition leaders and journalists extensively shared screenshots of the tweets, in which the user had called protesting farmers ‘parasites’, Indian Christians ‘rice bag converts’, and student bodies ‘extremist Naxal groups’, along with contentious statements.

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The first female to be appointed VC of the prestigious university, Pandit denied any knowledge about the aforementioned tweets and told NDTV that ‘nonsense is being spread’ about her with a ‘planned narrative’. “There is no question of denying. I never had a Twitter handle. These are planned narratives. How can tweets come out as soon as I was appointed? It was pre-planned,” she said.

“I don’t know who it was and who deactivated. I don’t even know what those tweets are,” Pandit added.

“This is a tectonic shift. Because a woman from the state of Tamil Nadu has been appointed. Why was it not done so far? This is a paradigm shift. Many are not able to digest this,” she further said.

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In one of the screenshots of the tweets, the handle had claimed that Mahatma Gandhi’s assassin, Nathuram Godse, had reason to kill the father of the nation. “I would believe both Gandhi and Godse, both read Gita and believed and took opposite lessons. Godse thought-action was important and identified the solution for a united India,” she had written.

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In yet another tweet, Pandit had reportedly advocated for the persecution of civil rights activists, whom she referred to as ‘mentally-ill jihadists’ in ‘Chinese’ style.

The new VC, who will hold the position for five years, had also remarked in the past that Muslims belonging to the Sunni sect of Islam were radical, and were ‘mentally ill jihadists’.

“I am a thorough academic. Please go through my CV. Is this a way to welcome a woman? See my biodata. Why aren’t you looking at my positives?” she told NDTV while dismissing claims over her ideological inclinations. “I don’t belong to any political party. I am non-partisan,” she said.