Evacuated from perilous PG basements, Satya Niketan students in limbo

In July this year, when 18-year-old Vansh Maurya learnt that he had secured a seat at a Delhi University (DU) college, celebrations broke out at his home in Uttarakhand’s Rudrapur

In July this year, when 18-year-old Vansh Maurya learnt that he had secured a seat at a Delhi University (DU) college, celebrations broke out at his home in Uttarakhand’s Rudrapur. It was the beginning of his “big city” dream. But amid the celebrations, his family also had to confront anxieties over accommodation and finances.

The recent tragedies have laid bare glaring gaps in regulatory and monitoring mechanisms (HT)

“My father earns ₹10,000 a month from his job at a factory; we earn a small sum from a dairy farm; and another small sum from renting two rooms. All this totals to around ₹25,000 a month,” said Vansh, who is pursuing a BA Programme at DU’s College of Vocational Studies (CVS) in south Delhi.

Accompanied by his mother, he arrived in Delhi for the first time on July 26. The two began looking for a paying guest (PG) accommodation or hostel that was safe, even if small; offered three meals a day; and was close to CVS to save on travel costs. CVS, which has around 4,000 students, is not among the 19 DU colleges with operational hostels.

With a handful of PG owners’ business cards obtained through college seniors, Vansh and his mother began their search.

“A bed in a flat for ₹15,000 excluding meals and electricity bills.” Unaffordable.

“Twin sharing in an AC room for ₹8,000 excluding meals.” Expensive.

“Twin sharing in a non-AC room for ₹6,000 excluding meals.” Barely affordable.

He eventually settled for the cheapest room he could find. The “room” – one of nine in a rundown building in Chirag Delhi – was in the basement. It had no windows, toilet or drinking water facility. The toilet was on the ground floor and shared by 12 students. Meals, if opted for, cost another ₹4,000. Morning tea was ₹15 a cup.

“I thought this placed the least amount of pressure on my parents,” said Vansh.

But barely a month after he moved in, the collapse of a boys’ PG in Satya Niketan that killed seven triggered panic among outstation students living in PGs. Three days later, cracks were found in the PG where Vansh lived, prompting the Delhi government to urgently evacuate 45 students at night. They were accommodated in creches and classrooms converted into makeshift rooms at CVS and Shaheed Bhagat Singh College.

Vansh was one of them.

“I called my parents when I was shifted. I was glad to be safe, but I was unsure of where to go from here. My parents kept asking me to come back home. They were anyway panicked after the Satya Niketan collapse,” he said.

The Satya Niketan collapse is the latest in a string of avoidable tragedies to hit Delhi this year. A building collapse in Saidulajab on May 30 killed six, including five students. A fire at a bed and breakfast in Hauz Rani on June 3 killed 23 people. A residential building fire in Vivek Vihar on May 3 killed nine, while a March 18 fire in Palam wiped out a family of nine.

The tragedies have laid bare glaring gaps in regulatory and monitoring mechanisms. Magisterial inquiry reports into the four incidents have pointed to deaths caused by “suffocation and lack of ventilation provisions” in Hauz Rani, “negligence while conducting inspection of the premises” in Saidulajab. The Vivek Vihar report said the tragedy was aggravated by deficiencies in fire-safety measures, restricted means of escape, locked terrace access and inadequate ventilation.

Yet students like Vansh continue to compromise – and, in some cases, wait to be evacuated.

“At 8.30pm we were informed about the building’s situation. I immediately sent some teaching staff to safely evacuate the students to the college, and made arrangements for them in the academic building,” said CVS principal Professor Shiv Kumar Sahdev.

Delhi education minister Ashish Sood said, “We received information about a PG operating in an unsafe building in Chirag Delhi. They were safely evacuated from the premises on Wednesday night.”

The building was sealed by MCD after inspections found severe structural concerns, including large cracks near staircases and portions of walls coming off.

Another 18-year-old CVS student who lived in the basement told HT: “It was suffocating to live there. The fans barely made any difference in the packed basement. Even during the day, we needed two tubelights. But I had made peace with it because that’s all my parents in Bihar could afford. Now they are asking me to return home, they say staying alive is more important than studying… But I worked so hard to get here at all. How can I just leave?”

The building owner, Sunil Kumar Sharma, however, told HT there were no rooms in the basement and that he lived in the building next door, where he ran a girls’ PG. He said the structure was more than a decade old and safe. “I have a certificate of structural stability from the Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee, and MCD’s approval regarding the structural safety of the building. This is being turned into an issue only because of upcoming DUSU elections,” he said.

He runs two PGs in buildings next to each other that stand back-to-back and share a common roof, in a cramped lane with a mesh of electrical wires overhead and a strong stench of garbage. The lane beside the girls’ PG is barely wide enough for a car, while the boys’ PG side is so narrow that only two-wheelers can pass.

To be sure, when HT arrived at the spot on Friday, looking in from a narrow, ground-level window on the boys’ PG revealed a row of beds. Rooms in basements were also visible in videos shared with HT by the evacuated students.

For 19-year-old Diya Oraon from Siliguri in West Bengal, the first member of her family to go to college, the evacuation has meant starting from scratch in a city far away. A BA History (Hons) student at Shaheed Bhagat Singh College, she had been living on the third floor of the PG, paying ₹12,000 in rent and another ₹4,000 for food.

“It took me a week to find a PG that fit my budget and now I have to start again. Most PGs have no vacancies or are too expensive. I do not have a single relative in NCR. I can’t go back home. I have studied too hard to come here,” she said.

Ritika Dhabarde, 18, from Bhilai in Chhattisgarh, who lived on the second floor of the same PG, is facing the same ordeal. “We have been calling PG owners but we’ve had no luck. Am I supposed to study or look for a room?” she said.

The crisis has put the spotlight on a problem that has been building for decades: too many students, and too little university accommodation.

HT recently reported that DU has 251,474 students enrolled in conventional programmes — including 210,907 undergraduates, 34,520 postgraduates and 6,047 students in certificate, diploma and postgraduate diploma courses. More than half are estimated to come from outside Delhi and require accommodation. Yet the university has only 7,224 official hostel beds.

For Vansh, the big-city dream may now be coming to an abrupt end. He is considering continuing his education through DU’s School of Open Learning.

“I will probably go back home. This city has left me no other option,” he said.