While the students of Jawaharlal Nehru University protest to bring back the MA students on campus, the students living in these hostels have complained about chunks of the ceiling falling off, waterlogging inside the rooms and water seeping inside the electric boards. The students said that even though the hostel wardens have lent an ear to their complaints, nothing has been done yet.
On September 2, Apeksha Priyadarshini, a PhD student and a resident of the Godavari Hostel, was in her room studying when a chunk of the ceiling fell on her table. "It could have very well been my head instead of the table. The hostel warden told us that they will visit the rooms on September 6, but they never came. The warden said that they do not have enough funds to buy as much as a single bag of cement," said the JNUSU Councillor.
While all the hostels are affected, the students living in the Godavari Hostel say that they have been affected the most. While the ground floor rooms are less affected, the ones on the upper floors have even seen waterlogging inside the rooms. "We have a WhatsApp group where all the students can put in their complaints and then I talk to the warden and try to get it resolved. Not all hostels have that, the issues of Godavari gets highlighted but that does not mean the others do not have issues," said the Hostel President of Godavari. "The wardens change every other year and the amount allotted for them for this kind of work is also limited. In a way, their hands are also tied. They have raised it with the administration but there has been no fruitful move as of yet," she added.
Saurav Shashank, a resident of the Jhelum Hostel, said that his books have been affected and are dripping wet. "I live on the ground floor, so my room does not have a balcony. Rather, my room is extended to the first-floor balcony. Now when the upper floor balconies are getting flooded, water is dripping inside my room. A table full of books got wet during the spell of excessive rainfall that Delhi saw the past few days," he added.
JNUSU President Aishe Ghosh shared videos of water gushing down a staircase and a waterlogged room of the Godavari Hostel and said that the JNU administration has been scamming the students. "If the NIRF rankings were on the scam and misuse of funds that universities have been doing, JNU would have surely topped the list in real terms," she wrote.
Another student also pointed out that Godavari is one of the JNU hostels which is PWD (Persons with disabilities) friendly and such structural problems in the hostels might even be fatal. "The other day I was walking down the corridor with a visually challenged hosteller and I saw a chunk of the roof fall. I quickly moved her out of the way. But I shudder to think what would have happened to her otherwise," she added.
While the hostels have seen some periodic patchwork on and off, the past year's lockdown has completely kept them unattended too. "This might be a major reason for the buildings being in shambles. But they need structural change. But we have just been asking for the basic patchwork for now," added a student.
The university has not reacted to the issue or responded to our questions. We will update the copy as and when they reply.
