Students from various hostels of IIT Madras began protesting on campus after they found worms in their dinner once again. The protest that started at 9:30 pm on Wednesday yielded results and the hostel committee has agreed to blacklist one of the caterers. The quarantined students were assured that they will be served better food starting December 31.

IIT Madras now has two caterers and a new team of cooks were waiting to take over, according to student sources. But since the new team is still serving their quarantine, the administration had said that they will be put in charge of the mess from the first week of January. "One of the caterers who had earlier been accused of delivering food wirh traces of hair, spider, insects etc were supposed to be replaced. But today when the students were served dinner with worms in it, it broke the dam and students in all of the hostels began protesting. The chairman of the hostel committee Dr Shaligram Tiwari and the Vice-Chairman Dr Thiagarajan came to meet us and assured that the accused caterer will be blacklisted and better food will be served from tomorrow," said Rajiv Chand, a PhD student from the Chemistry department at IIT Madras.

Earlier, students had already alleged that the institute's decision to run a single mess was the root cause of the sudden rise in COVID-19 cases. Now, they have alleged that the food quality has degraded to the extent that students found caterpillars, cockroaches and traces of human hair in their food.

IIT Madras was also completely shut down on December 14 after over 190 people tested positive on campus.