The TISS Students' Union has announced a strike across all campuses of the institute from Thursday against the administration demanding tuition, dining hall and hostel fees from scholarship students. The association is also protesting the withdrawal of aid by the college, meaning students will now have to pay full fees with no financial aid from the insitute. The association has claimed that students studying at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) under scholarship are exempted from paying such fees.
TISS has campuses in Mumbai, Tuljapur, Hyderabad and Guwahati.
"All talks and mediation with the administration over past many months have failed. The students' union of TISS calls for a University Strike across TISS campuses on February 21. We call for a boycott of all classes, field work and submissions," TISS Students' Union President Archana Soreng said.
The Centre's Post Matric Scholarship (GOI-PMS) issue stands unresolved since the institute has notified its withdrawal from all forms of financial aid to students, she claimed. "Now students, both current and newcomers, will have to pay their full fees even as they wait for their state scholarship amounts to come," Soreng said. The association has also demanded a notification from the institute about ways in which financial assistance for the PMS students of the upcoming batch of 2018-2020 will be provided.
Explaining the issue, she said that the institute without mentioning anything in the prospectus was now demanding tuition, dining hall (DH) and hostel fee from scholarship students of the 2016-18 batch. "The administration has also said that the 2017-2019 batch will have to pay the full fee for DH and hostel as the notification was out in May 2017 before they took admission and they were very well aware of the notification. But the argument cannot be bought as the notification was released in May 2017 in between the admission process, not before the admission process was initiated," she said.
