New Delhi: An academic seminar scheduled as part of one of the longest-running colloquiums at the Delhi School of Economics (DSE) has been cancelled on the directions of the administration of Delhi University, under which the DSE functions.The seminar, titled ‘Land, Property and Democratic Rights,’ had been organised as part of the Department of Sociology’s ‘Friday Colloquium’ series. It was supposed to take place tomorrow, October 31. The speaker, Dr. Namita Wahi, a senior fellow at the Centre for Policy Research, was scheduled to speak on constitutional changes and judicial interpretations of the right to property.The direction to cancel the event came in a WhatsApp message from the DU registrar, Vikas Gupta, to the head of the Sociology department:“Good Morning Ma’am. Due to administrative reasons, please cancel the lecture programme scheduled for Friday the 31st October 2025. A compliance report may also be submitted immediately. Thanks.. Regards…Vikas”The Wire has written to VC Singh, registrar Gupta, dean of research for humanities and social sciences Ujjwal Singh, and head of the department of sociology Anuja Agarwal. This story will be updated if and when any of them respond.Sociologist Nandini Sundar, the convenor of the Colloquium, a professor at the DSE, took to social media to register her dissent. “Since I can no longer guarantee the intellectual integrity of the research colloquium and that it will not be cancelled arbitrarily at the last minute, I have resigned as convenor of the colloquium,” her Facebook post read.Sundar further claimed that the event was cancelled without any formal reasons given. “No reasons for the cancellation were given, in writing or otherwise, so we can only speculate that the RSS-led government is scared of any discussion around land and democratic rights,” she wrote.The Friday Colloquium, she noted, is among the “oldest institutions of the Department of Sociology, at the Delhi School of Economics, and has functioned independently through the Emergency and all the other decades since the department was set up”.“The colloquium is not like any other seminar being cancelled – something we have sadly become inured to in the last decade. It was part of our teaching practice and graduate students are required to attend. It was a space for serious discussion where our students interacted with some very fine minds, and speakers came away impressed by the quality of our students,” she wrote.