Students protest, form human chain at Visva Bharati demanding immediate reopening of hostels

Kolkata: Students held demonstrations and formed human chains before different 'bhavanas' (departments) of Visva-Bharati University at Santiniketan on Thursday demanding immediate reopening of hostels, which have been closed since the declaration of the lockdown in the third week of March 2020 due to COVID-19.

Visva-Bharati SFI unit spokesperson Somnath Sow told PTI that the university authority is deliberately delaying the reopening of 15 hostels of the central university despite the Calcutta High Court order.

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"While Visva-Bharati has issued notification for commencement of offline tests from tomorrow (March 11) it is yet to open the hostels. So how can the large number of outstation students write their examinations? Many of them are either forced to shell out huge amounts as lodging fees in guest houses or cannot return to the campus and appear in the offline examinations due to financial reasons," he said.

The Left trade union has sought the opinion of students to decide whether to call for a boycott of exams or go for other forms of agitations from Friday.

A Visva-Bharati official when contacted said the process of opening hostels takes time as the properties had been closed for a long time.

"A section of students are unnecessarily staging drama over the issue. Visva-Bharati will do everything as per the wishes of the judiciary " the official said.

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He said the semester exam itinerary was decided after considering all aspects and the students are making unfair demand to put it off. The agitation by the VB students over the issue of opening of hostels has been on for the past 12 days. They held a sit-in since March 1 which was withdrawn on March 8 after high court ordered the reopening of the hostels.