Jamia Millia Islamia has started making arrangements to send students residing in their hostels to their respective States, with the first batch of students starting their journey to Jammu and Kashmir by a special bus on Sunday.
Last week, however, hostellers wrote to the Vice-Chancellor against the university’s recent order to have the residences vacated at the earliest.
The university had on May 1, instructed hostellers, who had stayed back in the hostels to vacate “as per the arrangements of transportation and travel protocols of the State governments”. It noted that it would be difficult for the university to maintain logistical and manpower requirements in the future apart from which the hostels were going to be required for “contingent quarantine facilities”.
In their letter to the V-C, women hostellers said that it would be impossible for them to vacate the hostel or take all their belongings. “We believe it is nothing but harassment in the time of crisis,” they wrote. They also also questioned the validity of using the hostels as a quarantine centre when hostellers were already residing there. The residents of the hostel also said that shifting belongings of people who had already left, without their permission, would be irresponsible, for which they demanded accountability.
Residents of the boys hostel wrote to the V-C, seeking her intervention, stating that the hostel administration was using “threatening language” to have them vacate the hostel, and questioned the logic of vacating the hostel during the pandemic, given it may put them at high risk of contracting the virus.
Students from Jammu and Kashmir left for their home State accompanied by two university guards, the JMI said. All those travelling were screened for flu-like symptoms before they started, it added.