Jawaharlal Nehru University student leader Umar Khalid finally has a Wikipedia page to his name. His appearance on the fifth most visited website in the world comes two years after his peers, former President of the Jawaharlal Nehru University Students’ Union(JNUSU) Kanhaiya Kumar and former vice-president of the JNUSU Shehla Rashid Shora.
Kanhaiya Kumar’s Wikipedia page was created on February 17, 2016, and already has a total of 1,491,601 page views since creation. Shehla Rashid’s page was created on March 23, 2016, and has a total of 463,150 page views since then, that is over 500 daily page views.
Despite three of them coming into the news around the same time in 2016, why was Umar Khalid’s Wikipedia page created only now? Well, people did try creating it in 2016, but it was deleted for various reasons. The first deletion from Wikipedia was on March 5, 2016. After other internet users tried creating the page, it was again removed from Wikipedia on August 17, 2016, and was stopped from being re-created by unregistered Wikipedia users. Soon after, the page was protected indefinitely from being created by anyone other than a Wikipedia administrator.
Only now, two years later, did someone decide to try questioning the justifications for the blocking Khalid’s page. The person who questioned why the page was still blocked from creation also pointed out humorously – “He keeps getting mentioned on news debates by Arnab Goswami”; as if that were a justification of notability. The recent assassination attempt along with the repeated appearance in the news over the past two years has helped too. He now has more than enough reputable news sources to warrant a Wikipedia page and meet Wikipedia guidelines. So, now no one can justify deleting his page even if they tried. Umar Khalid is there on Wikipedia to stay for good now.
Since the page was reviewed on September 12 and is now visible in Google search queries, it is slowly climbing the ranks and will soon appear right near the top of all Google search results for Umar Khalid. It will be interesting to note who gets more daily page views on their Wikipedia page, Umar Khalid or Kanhaiya Kumar? Another interesting aspect, vandalism on these pages is persistent to the extent that Shehla Rashid’s and Kanhaiya Kumar’s Wikipedia pages are currently semi-protected, meaning that unregistered Wikipedia IP addresses and users cannot edit the pages. Probably, the same will happen for Umar Khalid’s Wikipedia page soon.