Students cry foul over UoH closing admissions early in 2020, not filling vacant master's seats

On December 5, the University of Hyderabad's Students' Union wrote to the university Vice-Chancellor, asking him to consider the candidates from the waitlist to fill up the vacant seats in its master's course. The union, along with the aspirants who write the UoH entrance this year, allege that the university has closed its admissions unusually early, even before the universities like Jamia Milia Islamia, JNU and the University of Delhi released their rank list.

But then again, nothing about the year 2020 can be described as 'usual'.

While the admission process in the university began on October 16, an aspirant whom we spoke to says that the admissions were closed on November 19, according to an official who spoke with him. Deshdeep Dhankhar, an MA Political Science aspirant says that despite bagging the 36th rank in the entrance exam, he was denied admission. "I had found out that the student who bagged the 34th rank got the admission. However, I was told by the Admissions Office that the admissions were closed for the next academic year and got the refund for the same on December 2," he says.

But upon examining the rank list, Deshdeep says that he found names of students who had migrated to universities with better rankings. "This happens every year. After the first rank list gets released, there are chances that students move to universities like JNU and DU. This creates vacant seats and students from the waitlist get the chance here. However, that has not happened this time," he says. He had shared copies of the emails that he had sent to the UoH administration informing the same and says that none of the emails yielded a response.

The UoH Students' Union President Abhishek Nandan tells us that Deshdeep's isn't an isolated case and that a lot of students have approached the Union, raising similar issues. "Seats are vacant for MPhil and PhD courses too. Our university doesn't care about fulfilling students' needs and providing education," he says. He added that despite them observing a hunger strike and conducting meetings, they never heard anything positive from the administration. In November, the Union had written another letter to the VC, stating that a large number of MPhil and PhD seats are vacant.

Calls made to the university administration seeking a comment did not yield a response. This copy will be updated when they respond.