Visva-Bharati University students have boycotted the semester exams that were due to start on March 11 and demanded that hostels be reopened immediately. They said that many students hail from remote areas across the country and some are even foreign students — if the hostels are not made available to them, they cannot sit for the exams as the accommodation elsewhere is very expensive.
The VBU campus has been seeing massive students' protests over the past few months. The students had been protesting about reopening hostels for over a month and the university did not budge till the recent Calcutta High Court order forced them to, the problem now seems to be the timeline. The court said that the hostels need to reopen as soon as possible for the students who have examinations right around the corner.
While the exams start from March 11, the last date for submission of forms for hostel accommodation is March 17. "We are boycotting the exams as many of our friends will have to skip this exam as they cannot find affordable accommodation here. They will have to clear arrears for these papers later. This is not fair," said VBU's Students' Federation of India (SFI) unit leader, Somenath Sow. He clarified that this boycott and the ongoing sit-in are being organised by the general students of VBU and not under a political banner.
VBU Vice-Chancellor Dr Bidyut Chakrabarty had stormed up another controversy when he said that students who are protesting are being accompanied by "outsiders". Somenath said that only those who have ID cards are being let inside by the VBU guards. "If the authority gave ID cards to outsiders then it's a different issue," he added.
VBU officials said that it takes a minimum amount of time to get rooms into shape and that this is the fastest turnaround one can expect. "We are inviting applications for a week and will be ready with the rooms as soon as we can," said an official. The notice from the Proctor's office said, "Visva-Bharati, is inviting applications from bona-fide and interested Semester I Undergraduate and Semester I Postgraduate programme students who wish to reside in the hostels of the university on a priority basis following the Honourable Justice of High Court of Calcutta’s ruling," said the notice. "Rooms will be allotted after they are made habitable for occupancy: this includes repairs and/or replacement, particularly of electricity/electrical facilities, washroom facilities, water and drinking-water systems, etc. in the hostels," it added.
The Calcutta HC, in its order, had specifically said that priority for hostel occupation should be given to students in terms of the examination schedule. VBU said that rooms will be allotted to "select student-boarders based on university rules of academic merit and distance from home".
