Akhil Bhartiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) held protests on 19th February at North Campus to raise their demands, which included the re-opening of the campus, an extension of library timings and hostel allotment.
ABVP office-bearers met the heads of administration, the Proctor and Dean along with the Student Welfare body. They presented a memorandum of their demands and grievances.
ABVP demanded a blended learning format, where those who choose to come to the campus for offline studies, should be allowed to do so. Meanwhile, online classes should run simultaneously. There should be no compulsion about offline classes.
Currently, only Final year students who required practical classes are allowed on the campus.
ABVP’s Requirements
Other demands which were proposed included an extension of library timings. They asserted the libraries should be opened for at least 12 hours per day. In light of the pandemic, the stationery costs for students have increased as they had no textbooks from the library. PDFs and DOC files being forwarded in class groups have become the daily norm.
Another demand which was put forth by ABVP was for the reopening of hostels for all undergraduate and postgraduate courses. They also demanded the release of centralised hostel forms.
Examination results
The ABVP protestors also asked for declaration of pending end-semester examination results. As of now results of some courses have been declared and some are still pending. Another demand brought forward by the delegation was, ‘an additional opportunity for ex-students to appear in qualifying examinations to secure their respective educational degrees and a reduced police presence within the campus.’
ABVP also announced that if its demands are not met they will “conduct a gherao of the local police station to register its dissatisfaction with the peremptory and abusive behaviour of the police officials.” This has been announced via an official statement by ABVP on its Twitter handle.
Administration’s reply to ABVP
Sidharth Yadav, State Secretary of ABVP Delhi said, “our meeting with the officials of the varsity was promising and we are hopeful that the process of reopening the campus will be set in motion sans further delay to safeguard the interests of the student community.”
The administration has assured that current hostellers could continue residing on a guest basis. Appropriate arrangements for accommodations of first-year students will be done once their semester-end examinations of March are over. About reopening of campus, the varsity assured that the phased process will be completed by March. As per the statement, Library timings are expected to extend and e-library facilities will be provided by the first week of March.
Similar protests are being held at the campus of various universities like JNU, AUD and Jamia.
 held protests on 19th February for reopening of the campus, extension of library timings and hostel allotment.){kind=link}