All India Democratic Students’ Organisation (AIDSO) activists staged a demonstration in front of the Mini Vidhana Soudha on Tuesday, October 15, protesting against the state government's decision to introduce management seats in the University BDT College of Engineering in Davanagere, one of the oldest engineering colleges of Karnataka.
The protesters led by district unit Vice-Presidents of the AIDSO Priti Dodmani and Govind Yalwar; District Unit Secretary Tulajaram NK; district committee members Ajay, Spurti, Babu and others, who spoke on the occasion, said that the recent order of implementing a 50% payment quota from this academic year has raised concern, stated a report by The New Indian Express.
"Of the 504 seats in the first year, 254 are sold for Rs 97,000 each, according to their rankings, while the remaining 250 merit seats have a fee of Rs 43,000 which is still a significant burden on students. Despite demands from students' organisations and academics to scrap payment quota seats, there has been no positive response from the government yet," they alleged.
The AIDSO leaders said that Karnataka is the only state which responded to the demand of the students not to implement the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020.
"Immediately after coming to power, the Congress government decided to implement SEP (State Education Policy) instead of NEP. But now, since the government has converted over 50% of UBDT seats of UBDT as payment quota, we feel that in the coming days, the government might extend this policy to other government colleges also. It is an anti-student and anti-people step," the AIDSO leaders said, and asked the government to withdraw the introduction of management seats in the UBDT college and give them to eligible students as government seats.
They submitted a memorandum in this regard to Chief Minister Siddaramaiah through the Deputy Commissioner’s office.