More housing options: Hostels to come up at three colleges in Chandigarh

Move comes after the Chandigarh administration’s crackdown on unregulated paying guest facilities

Hostels are all set to come up at three colleges in the city within the next two years. The move comes after the Chandigarh administration’s crackdown on rampant growth of unregulated paying guest (PG) accommodations in the city.

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Rubinderjit Singh Brar, director of school and higher education, said a new hostel at Government College of Commerce and Business Administration (GCCBA) in Sector 50 has been approved; while those at Post Graduate Government College for Girls in Sector 46 and Sector 42 are in the pipeline.

The principal of GCCBA approved the map for the upcoming hostel on Tuesday. The matter will be forwarded to the office of chief engineer Mukesh Anand now, officials said.

A meeting has been scheduled to discuss the hostels which are to come up at government colleges in Sector 46 and 42 with chief engineer and education secretary. They will be told to expedite the process, officials concerned said. Currently, the project for these two hostels is stuck in litigation at Punjab and Haryana high court.

Educational institutions in the city have so far been unable to meet the growing demand for hostels. While hostel facilities for students are almost non-existent in city schools, it is limited in colleges as well.

For instance, DAV College in Sector 10 has around 750 hostel seats against its total strength of over 9,000 students. Goswami Ganesh Dutta Sanatan Dharma (GGDSD) College in Sector 32, has only 500 seats available in its hostel against its total strength of over 4,000 students.

In the last 15 years, the number of students coming from other states and countries to the city has increased manifold.

As per the UT administration’s policy, originally, there were no provisions for city schools to have boarding facilities. The policy for expansion of existing hostel facilities in colleges was also ambiguous.

In 2011, a new policy was introduced to create and expand hostels within the premises of colleges.

After this, they were allowed to opt for an increase in floor to area ratio (FAR) for additional construction within campuses.

In November 2019, UT linked calculation of additional FAR charges with collector rates, annulling earlier rates. Earlier, charges for additional FAR of 0.25 was pegged at ₹200 per square feet; after the introduction of the new formula, it was increased to around ₹3,400 per square feet. The new rates made it very expensive for colleges to construct hostels, thus, making the policy defunct.

However, last month, in a meeting of a committee chaired by UT administrator, a decision was taken to reduce the additional FAR charges, a proposal for which will be sent to the Centre for approval.