Demanding safe campus, 900 NIT students leave for homes
DEHRADUN: More than 900 students of the National Institute of Technology in Pauri Garhwal district have gone back to their homes in protest over their demand for a “permanent and safe campus”.
The 932 students left the campus after their 22-day protest, which began on October 4, did not evoke any favourable response from the authorities. The students want the present campus, along the busy National Highway 58 at Srinagar in Garhwal town, be shifted to a safe location in the plains. The authorities said they have approached the central government for its intervention.
The students boycotted classes in protest after two students met with an accident on the highway while they were on their way to a college laboratory on the campus.
Students say anyone could have been the victim. “Raising our voice against threat to life is more important than thinking about our career right now,” Sathyam Rajpal, a second-year student back at his home in Ghaziabad told HT over phone.
Vaibhav Tiwari, a second-year student of electronics and communication engineering, said they left because the authorities were not paying heed to their demands. Another student from the computer science department, Anjum, said the present location does not provide them with facilities that an engineering student should have access to.
The students have also written to President Ram Nath Kovind and Uttarakhand chief minister Trivendra Singh Rawat.
Under the Centre’s 11th fiveyear plan, Uttarakhand got one of the 10 notified National Institutes of Technology in 2009. The college began admitting students in 2010 at a makeshift campus at the Government Polytechnic College.
RB Patel, director in-charge of the NIT, said, “The college has no role to play in this protest; only the state government can take some decision and help us.”
NIT registrar Col Sukhpal Singh said they can only ask the students to return. “The college authorities have repeatedly approached the ministry of human resource development (headed by Prakash Javadekar) and the state government, apprising them of the situation. We are requesting them to take the necessary action...,” he said.
Parents have also come out in support of the students in their protest. Some of them have even written to the MHRD. One of them, Sadhana Singh, wrote to the ministry saying they do not feel safe sending their children to a college where they are not safe.
Ramesh Mamgain, father of a first-year BTech student, said, “I got my son admitted to this college instead of Pant Nagar University because the NIT holds national importance.