For the past two days, the students of Pondicherry University have been protesting against the fee hike. They are also asking the administration to implement a reservation for students from Puducherry and reimplement their semester examination system. But on day 2 of the strike, the university has issued a statement saying that even though the student representatives were invited for a meeting twice, none of them turned up to resolve the issues. 

"The elected representatives of the Students Council/Office Bearers were invited by the University Authorities to find out their grievances on March 25. But none of the students' council members came forward for the meeting," reads the statement. It also says, "The University authorities convened an emergency meeting at 10.00 am (on March 26) in the Council Hall of the University and requested the students' council members to come for discussion. However, in spite of the repeated appeals by the university authorities, the members of the students' council did not come to meet the university authorities to resolve the issues."

The student representatives, however, denied all the claims made by the university. The strike was organised by the Joint Action Committee (JAC) of which the Students' Council was a part, along with the SFI, ASA, MSF, SIO, APSF and NSUI. The council members were adamant that the JAC representatives should also be invited to the meeting. "We had no idea about a meeting on Monday," said Junaid Nazar, the university's Students' Council President. He says that the administration proposed an idea to have a meeting only with the Students' Council and not the other representatives on Tuesday. "The strike wasn't organised by the council alone, we were just a part of the JAC. We want the university's administration to have a discussion with the JAC representatives too. They also have the right to meet the administration," he adds.