The Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) along with the Delhi University Students' Union (DU SU) have been protesting outside several Delhi University colleges since the morning of October 29, demanding that the university authorities reopen the campuses. Left-leaning students organisations had been protesting for the same issue for the past few days. The Delhi government, after a meeting with the Department Of Delhi Disaster Management Authority (DDMA) has announced the reopening of schools and colleges from November 1 but the students say they haven't seen an official order yet and are not contended with just a verbal announcement.
Speaking to Edexlive, DUSU President Akshit Dahiya, said, "The university hasn't released any official notification regarding campuses reopening even after the DDMA's announcement. Therefore, we are protesting for the campuses to reopen today. We are demanding that all campuses be reopened for physical classes. There is also a demand to vaccinate those students who aren't vaccinated already and to conduct online examinations for students who have attended only online classes over the last year."
Around 56 colleges of Delhi University are participating in the protest that will continue till the evening. "We expect the number of participating colleges to exceed 60 before the days end," said Sidharth Yadav, ABVP Delhi State Secretary. "Besides the protests outside individual colleges, we are also mass protesting outside the Arts Faculty," he added.
The protest is taking place against the backdrop of the first Executive Council (EC) meeting after the new VC Yogesh Singh joined the university earlier this month. "We submitted memorandums listing our demands to reopen the campuses before the EC members entered the meeting. We are hoping that the issues will be discussed and a solution will be found," said Dahiya.
In fact, memorandums were also submitted by the DUSU to principals of various colleges in the DU north campus. "We want them to forward our demands to the university authorities with their supportive remarks regarding campus reopening," said Dahiya, who spoke to us from outside Shri Ram College of Commerce, where he submitted a memorandum to the acting principal.
The All India Students' Association (AISA) were also on an indefinite hunger strike outside the campus along with other left-leaning organisations over the last five days, which they ended on October 29. "An AISA delegation was assured by DU proctors that a notification on reopening the campus will be released in a week. We have ended the hunger strike now but protests will resume if the authorities don't release the notification next week," said Abhigyan, AISA Delhi State Secretary.
