Coaching schools on mission ‘litter’

The road outside the engineering department of Jamia Millia Islamia was inundated by pamphlets and posters on Saturday

They came, they saw, they littered.

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The road outside the engineering department of Jamia Millia Islamia was inundated by pamphlets and posters on Saturday, the day of the B Tech entrance examination.

With more than 10,000 students appearing for the B Tech examination, at the university, private coaching institutes as well as private colleges saw the opportunity to market their institutes, offering discounts on admission to their centres and institutes.

More than 20 kiosks were set up outside the gate of the engineering department in the morning, with representatives from educational institutes offering up to 80% discount to coaching classes for admission, crowding the entrance and distributing pamphlets that the nervous students did not have time to read.

By the time students were out of the examination centre, the road and the pavements were covered with pamphlets. “It was like a fair. No one would believe that an entrance exam was taking place there. It was quite chaotic. No one had the time to read pamphlets,” said Rishi Sood, who had come from Chandigarh to appear for the exam.

The security guards posted on the entrance had instructions from the university officials not to allow the representatives from coaching institutes to trouble students and litter. But even they couldn’t do much.

“This happens every year. We keep asking them to leave, but no strong action can be taken as there are many students and parents on the spot,” said Ayub Kahn, a university security guard.

Former dean of the engineering department Sayed Sikander Nabi said: “This trend has started growing over the past few years. But since the road does not belong to the university, it can’t do anything about it.”