The students of the Ambedkar Students Association from the University of Hyderabad organised a protest gathering on Tuesday despite section 144 being imposed on campus. The students were, however, protesting against the fact that 23 reserved category seats were being 'kept vacant' by the University. The students said that they had planned the protest before the Kashmir issue came up in Parliament.
"We have been making representations to various authorities from the administration and nobody listened to us. We didn't want to protest but we had no other choice," Samson Gidla, the ASA President said. The police did come to campus to check on the protesting students and warned them about getting arrested if they raise slogans or cause any other disturbance on campus, "The police questioned us and I told them that this protest had nothing to do with Kashmir and that it was about seats. So we were told that we should not shout any slogans and go anywhere outside or cause any disturbance. We were told we would be arrested if we did so," he added.
The students have been protesting against the management for not filling 23 seats reserved for SC, ST, OBC, PWD, EWS students, the ASA said that this was a serious violation of reservation policy in MPhil and PhD admissions. The students say that this is a violation of guidelines issued by the UGC with respect to non-implementation of the decisions made by SC, ST admission advisory committee 2014-2015.
The three concerns the association has raised with the administration is — failure to call students for an interview, non-announcement of the waiting list and non-filling of vacancy properly. The students say that nearly 22 departments haven't released their waiting list. "Without the release of the waiting list, it is impossible to fill all the vacancies," the letter said.
"The ratio to be maintained for SC candidates who are called for the interview is 1:6, this ratio has been violated in many departments in spite of having enough students. Administrations failure to call enough students for the interview is a blatant violation of the constitutional safeguards," the students point out.
The students in the letter also threw light on the fact that since UpH adopted the 'no-cut off' policy, there should be no reason for the seats to go vacant. "Since there is no cut off in entrance and interviews, there cannot exist any vacant seats, These discrepancies in the admission process has put the research aspiration of students from marginalised sections at stake," the ASA said.
The students said that they will continue the protests till the administration fills all the seats, "We've been talking about this for so long, now they've completed the admissions but we are going to keep agitating. They said they would address the issue soon but we are not sure when they will," Samson said.
