NEW DELHI: The student collective Pinjra Tod on Monday staged a protest against the curfew in hostel timings for women students of Delhi University.

Asking the students to join an night-long sit-in at North Campus, the collective said no action had been taken on a memorandum that it had submitted to the DU VC last week.

When the initial negotiation with the authority failed to resolve the issues, the protesters tried to break the locks of the university office and blocked Mall Road for at least an hour, forcing the police to divert traffic. “The deputy proctor and the proctor came to meet us but did not listen to our demands,” said Devangana Kalita, a member of Pinjra Tod. The students even broke one of the locks of the main gate.

The blockade was called off after 10pm when a few Pinjra Tod members were called to meet the proctor.

Besides demanding 24-hour entry into women’s hostels, the collective had asked for separate hostels for disabled students. According to the memorandum, Pinjra Tod had been raising the issues for the past three years but the university had shown no sign of action. “The ICC (internal complaints committee on gender harassment) code is still unimplemented, the curfew still remains, necessary infrastructural work undelivered.”

At ‘DU against Curfew — All-Night Protest’, many students shared their experiences about living in hostels. Many also spoke about their experiences of not finding hostel facilities at all.

Shweta Kumari, a Law Faculty student from Bihar, said, “Many PwD (person with disability) students have to stay at private PGs and hostels that are unsafe. These are far away in Rohini and Dwarka, and food is also bad.” She added that most girls didn’t speak out as they fear they would be thrown out of the hostels. “We want hostels with at least 70-75% reservation.”

The charter also called for need-based, not merit-based, allocation of hostel seats and “strict implementation” of reservations in all women’s hostels.