A tense situation prevailed on the three campuses of the Central University of Kerala (CUK) on Tuesday with postgraduate students, including girls, opting to stay back in their classrooms and library hall accusing senior officials of denying them decent hostel facility.
The students said things came to a pass in the evening after CUK officials, including Vice Chancellor G. Gopakumar, allegedly refused to pay heed to their complaints regarding accommodation. They even refused to hold talks with the worried parents of the new entrants who had reached here from various parts of the country, they said.
Fresh batches of students were enrolled in the institution last week.
Students’ forum
The students floated a forum they christened as Students Refugee Movement (SRM) and held talks with P. Karunakaran, MP, who was visiting his residence near Neeleswaram, seeking his intervention to end the stalemate.
The students then decided to stay back in their classrooms. Around 70 girls decided to stay back on the university’s makeshift Vidyanagar campus in Kasaragod, another 70 on the CUK’s main campus at Periye, and the rest 100 on the Padannakkad campus near Neeleswaram. The boys, unruffled over their accommodation, decided to arrange food and other basic facilities to the girls, Vishakh, an office-bearer of the SRM, told The Hindu.
“More than the accommodation issue, it is a question of the callous attitude adopted by senior CUK officials. They refused to allay the apprehensions of worried parents of the students who were enrolled last week,” he said.
“The university has failed to ensure adequate hostel facilities to balance the unprecedented expansion drive undertaken without any planning,” an SRM statement said.
In future, 66% of postgraduate students would not have hostel facilities, which was not fair. Mr. Vishakh said the students were forced to seek accommodation outside the campus at an exorbitant rate, while the charges to stay at hostel came around ₹2,000.
Efforts to contact senior university officials and Mr. Karunakaran to elicit their version were not successful.