The Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) is organising the All India NIT Students' Conference 2019 on September 14 and 15 at the Sardar Vallabhbhai National Institute of Technology in Surat and the Students' Federation of India (SFI) are not pleased with it. The SFI said that it is "highly shameful and condemnable that NIT Surat being an institute of national importance is becoming a platform of ABVP".
Though the SFI said that this is nothing but a meet for ABVP activists in NIT, the programme schedule and the proposal for the conference includes competitions as well — paper presentations, change-makers of India and drone movers. The winner is set to win Rs 10,000, runner-up Rs 7,000 and Rs 5,000 for the one who finishes in the third-place. And you thought studying does not pay. Some of the other sessions also sound interesting — NIT Talks want to include conversations on nationalism, innovation and technology but the most intriguing of the lot is a session called Making India Great. Calls to the NIT Surat administration went unanswered.
The NIT, the students' organisation said, discourages any kind of student protests on campus but at the same time are joining hands with the right-wing student party for the conference. "The BJP/RSS agenda of saffronisation of the institutions in the country has been revealed yet again. The NIT administration has officially associated with ABVP and allowed them to use the prestigious NIT logo as well. But at the same time, they are discouraging any sort of democratic student activism on campus," said SFI President VP Sanu.
"The MHRD and NIT Surat administration are bound to answer on what ground did they officially associate with ABVP to organise the All India NIT Students' Conference which is scheduled to be held from September 14 to 15," said Mayukh Biswas, General Secretary of SFI. "We demand that this association be immediately withdrawn and strict action be taken against the concerned officials of the institute," he added.
