Students boycott classes over increase in bus fee

Jammu, January 15

Students of the Central University of Jammu (CUJ) on Tuesday boycotted their classes and demonstrated outside the office of the Vice Chancellor (VC), demanding an immediate rollback of the order on bus fee.

Hundreds of students staged a sit-in outside the VC office to protest the “arbitrary decision” of the university to charge Rs 1,000 per month as the bus fee from every student.

They said the university administration was allegedly pressuring them to pay or else they won’t be allowed to use the bus service.

“The university used to charge Rs 1,000 per year from every student at the time of admission. Now in the middle of session, they are asking the students to pay Rs 1,000 per month as the transportation fee. The university works for five days a week that implies that students will just attend the university for almost 22 days. Rs 1,000 for just 22 days sounds unfair,” the protesters alleged.

After an hour-long protest, Vice Chancellor Ashok Aima met the students and asked them to constitute a students’ council for holding dialogue with the university. He announced that theorder was put on hold for a month.

Deepak Pathania, Dean Students Welfare, CUJ, said the University Grants Commission had stopped the funding for hiring the buses being used for ferrying students.

“It has become difficult for us to meet the expenses which cost the university around Rs 1 crore per annum. We have hired 17 buses and if we calculate, it comes of Rs 1,700 per student per month. We decided to charge just Rs 1,000 per month from each student but they are adamant for free transportation which is not possible,” Pathania said.