Students’ chain hunger strike enters Day 18

Bhanu P Lohumi

Tribune News Service

Shimla, April 25

While the chain hunger strike started by activists of the Students Federation of India (SFI) to press for basic amenities in HP University entered the 18th day today, the university authorities called the agitating students for talks but no solution could be reached.

SFI campus president (HPU) Noval Thakur said the Dean, students’ welfare, asked them to end the strike, but they refused asking the authorities to fix a time period for fulfillment of their demands in written.

“It’s been three years that we are fighting for our demands, but nothing concrete has been done till date. We are sitting here in support of our 44 demands, including recruitment of teaching and non-teaching staff, revision of curriculum which has not been revised since 1990 and provision of basic amenities such as toilets and safe drinking water,” he added.

Alleging that hasty implementation of the Rashtriya Uchchatar Shiksha Abhiyan (RUSA) has led to chaos and the future of around 30,000 students is at stake, the students said the university outside the states were not giving admissions to students passing under the new Choice Based Credit System (CBCS).

Saying RUSA should be stopped immediately, ABVP campus secretary, HPU, Ankit Jamwal threatened to launch a statewide agitation if even a single student was denied admissions anywhere in the country due to the choice-based credit system.

Meanwhile, the non-teaching employees today held a gate meeting to oppose the re-employment given to the finance officer. They served a seven-day ultimatum to the university authorities to cancel the appointment.

Alleging that the appointment has been made against the norms, the Non-teaching Employees Association also announced work to rule from today, besides staging one-hour protest from 10.30 am to 11.30 am in support of their demands on the university campus till their demands were fulfilled.