The Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) and the National Students Union of India (NSUI) staged separate protests on Tuesday over the Delhi Government’s directive to the 12 DU colleges fully funded by it to pay the outstanding salaries of employees from the Students Society Fund (SSF).
According to police, 53 protesters were detained before they could reach the Delhi secretariat and released subsequently. NSUI national president Neeraj Kundan said the students’ fund is part of the fees collected from students and according to university statutes, it cannot be utilised for paying salaries to teachers.
“On one hand, the Delhi government says it allocates such a high budget for education and on the other, it is not ready to give grants for payment of salaries. We demand that the order be revoked and the Government release grants to these colleges,” he said.
ABVP Delhi State secretary Sidharth Yadav said, “After a series of fee hikes in colleges under its management, the recent directive legitimising the embezzlement of students’ money is yet another assault by the Delhi Government on the rights of the student community. The Delhi government is using the Covid-19 pandemic as a convenient excuse to camouflage its incompetence and justify the misappropriation of the SSF corpus towards functions not connected to student welfare.”
