Students claimed that they will not call off the strike till the order is revoked. (Express photo by Nirmal Harindran/ Reprsentational)Students of GB Pant Engineering College began a hunger strike on Tuesday demanding inclusion of the institute in the admission counselling after it was dropped by Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University (GGSIPU) from the list.
The students, who have been protesting outside Vikas Sadan in north Delhi since Monday and also spent the night there, claimed that they will not call off the strike till the order is revoked.
Former Delhi BJP president Vijay Goel also visited the students who are sitting on protest. BJP spokesperson Harish Khurana, Delhi University Students Union (DUSU) President Akshay Dahiya, and ABVP secretary Siddharth Yadav accompanied him.
“Five of us are sitting on a hunger strike while other students will continue with the protest. We will not move from here till our demands are met. They cannot play with our future by taking any random decision overnight,” said one of the students on hunger strike.
The Delhi Cabinet had last year in March approved construction of an integrated campus of GB Pant Engineering College (GBPEC) and Polytechnic at Okhla Industrial Estate at an estimated cost of over Rs 520 crore.
However, there has been no official word on non-inclusion of the college in the counselling process for admission, other than indications of the institute being merged with yet to be established Delhi Skills University.
“IP University officials have accepted that GBPEC is no more on the list of its affiliated colleges and also accepted that there will be no admission in the first year of this academic year. This will also impact the third-year students as there may not be any campus placements because no company would want to hire students from a college which is shutting down,” Goel said.
He said the Kejriwal government had promised to open 20 new degree colleges and now they are shutting down their engineering college.
“It proves that higher education is not a priority for the Delhi government,” Goel, who is also a former union minister, said.
“It is still not clear what will happen to students of the second, third and fourth year whether college will affiliate with Netaji Subhas University of Technology or not, but one thing is very clear that from this year they took the decision to close down the college slowly hence no admission in first year of this academic year,” he added.