The students of TISS, Hyderabad have filed a writ petition at the Telangana High Court to revoke the sine-die imposed on their campus. Despite the TISS, Hyderabad management shutting down the campus, four students continue to be on a hunger strike. Since students are not allowed on campus or engaging with the administration, they are now seeking legal counsel and hope to fight their cause directly in court.
On July 15, the administration imposed a sine-die closure of all academic activities on campus. In their notice, the management had listed in chronological order all the efforts they had put into having a dialogue with the students and how they had all failed. The students have now released a statement in the form of a rebuttal to the notice stating the events since June 26.
The students said that the administration had made multiple false allegations on the student body in order to paint the protest as 'illegal and unlawful'. They claimed that from June 26, the students had been trying to engage with the administration. Three Adivasi students had decided to sit on the road as they had not been allowed to step into the hostel as they had been unable to afford the fees. They went on to state that a general body meeting had been held and the students had complained about the moral policing that they were put through by the hostel management and derogatory statements that had been made.
They claimed that the first demonstration was conducted with the complete knowledge of the Student Action Committee unlike what the administration had said in their notice. The students went on to say that they had not received any response to their charter as well. The students say in their statement that they were falsely accused of causing trouble and were 'threatened' by the administration.
"When students ask for solutions, the administration's response of shutting the campus shows the incapability and mismanagement of TISS Hyderabad and it is important to note that it is for the first time in the history of the institute that a student protest had been dealt with issuing
notices to shut down the campus indefinitely," the students said in their statement.
The students continue to stay in the TISS hostels as they are run by service providers but they say they are nowhere close to giving up on their struggle. "We have been getting some legal counsel and we've decided to file a case but there's still a lot of work left to do," a member of the Student Action Committee told Edex.
