SOL students demand all-route bus passes as regulars

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, January 20

Accusing the Aam Aadmi Party-led Delhi government of step-motherly treatment, students of the Delhi University’s School of Open Learning (SOL) are demanding that like regular students, the government must provide them all-route bus passes too.

The students will hold a demonstration outside Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal’s residence here tomorrow when they will also raise the issue of 20 new colleges that were promised by Kejriwal before Assembly elections, but on which nothing has been done till now, said Harish Gautam, Delhi state committee member of the Krantikari Yuva Sangathan.

He said SOL students, who largely come from deprived and marginalised backgrounds are only issued single-route bus passes despite paying the same price at which regular students are issued all-route bus passes by the Delhi Transport Corporation.

“Those who really need are denied concessional bus passes for all routes while the relatively better-off regular students of the DU avail all-route bus pass facility.

“This amounts to a blatant discrimination against those students, who are already facing marginalisation in society in terms of skewed educational opportunities,” the Krantikari Yuva Sangathan member added.