The ongoing protest at the University of Hyderabad (UoH) has divided the 5,200 member strong student community into two, with many students now demanding immediate resumption of the academic activities on the campus shut since Rohith Vemula’s suicide on January 17.
A meeting and a rally is planned for Thursday on the campus by independent, apolitical students to appeal the agitators to allow the classes and labs to run and also to plead the authorities to see that the university starts functioning, “to avoid the washout of the important semester with project submissions and placements.”
As Ambedkar Students Association (ASA) and other student outfits continue the “Justice for Rohith” protests that is finding echo across the country and the UoH itself remains closed for the straight 10th day, several students on the campus are breaking their silence and particularly on the social media, saying “it is high time we stand and speak for ourselves.”
Students and some professors say they are puzzled by the ongoing protests even after a judicial probe was ordered into the whole issue. They say that a group of students are turning up at each academic block every morning to close it either by appeal or by force.
The reading room which was opened on Tuesday was again “forcibly closed” on Wednesday by a group – which some students alleged “comprised of several outsiders that even abused them.”
{{/usCountry}}The reading room which was opened on Tuesday was again “forcibly closed” on Wednesday by a group – which some students alleged “comprised of several outsiders that even abused them.”
{{/usCountry}}The move comes even as the interim vice-Chancellor Vipin Srivastava’s repeated appeals to engage the agitators into a dialogue failed.