India
The students have been agitating for the last 54 days to demand a permanent campus. According to them, till now, the Ministry of Human Resource and Development has not taken any action
New Delhi: Due to the state government's failure to meet the students’ demand of a new campus, more than 250 students of National Institute of Technology students on Tuesday have staged a protest at Jantar Mantar. The first and second-year students have alleged that the state government is ‘playing with their careers’ by not building a safe campus for the courses.
The students have been agitating for the last 54 days to demand a permanent campus. According to them, till now, the Ministry of Human Resource and Development has not taken any action.
The protests have reached the National Capital, Delhi. The students are protesting the delay in shifting the prestigious National Institute of Technology to the permanent campus; and the government's ignorance in providing compensation and justice to one of the NIT students, Neelam, who was hit by a car last year, when she was commuting from her classes to the lab. She was paralysed due to the accident. The campus split into two blocks by NH 58, and due to this, the students have to cross the highway to attend their classes and go back to their hostels, putting their lives in danger.
MyNation spoke to the students of Mtech, and they said that in 2014, the National Building Construction Corporation Ltd was constructing the campus in Sumari Village. The proposed budget for building the structure was estimated at 187 crores for developing the land and Rs 315.75 crore was proposed for the construction of the campus building. Reportedly, the total estimation spiked to 1200 crore, due to which the Ministry of Human Resources and Development rejected the site.
Kuber, one of the students told MyNation that the construction could not be done in Sumari village as experts, in 2017, found that the infrastructure would collapse as the land is prone to landslides and cloudbursts. He also said that the government announced that NIT would shift to a permanent campus in Jaletha village in Srinagar. However, as per NIT Act, the land is not eligible for the construction of the permanent campus.
NIT students are also facing a dearth of lab and education facilities due to which students believe that the administration should refund their fees, and shut down the institute. Two months ago, more than 800 students had gone to their homes, after which the issue sparked an outrage.
National Institute of Technology, Uttarakhand, is one of the prestigious institutions in our country formed under the eleventh five-year plan in 2009, in which 10 NITs were also established in other cities of the country. It began new admissions to the institute, however, since its formation, the institute is struggling to get a permanent campus.
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