Hundreds of students pursuing integrated BEd and MEd under the FM University on Tuesday staged a demonstration demanding that their concern be addressed.
The agitating students, as per their earlier plan, while were moving with placards and banners to Bhubaneswar to participate in a State level rally, they were stopped by the district administration initially near Bhimpura.
District Collector K Sudarshan Chakraverthy as well as Superintendent of Police B Jugal Kishore urged the agitators to call off the agitation assuring to look into their issue.
The students then came to the Collectorate and staged a dharana in front of the district Collector office. Although Sadar MLA MM Dutta and Nilgiri MLA Sukanta Nayak urged the students to stop the agitation yet the agitators refused to budge asking a written assurance from the district Collector. They continued to sit at the dharna place till evening.
Finally, the students were convinced by the district administration officials following which they withdrew the agitation.
The students alleged that they are not eligible for the post of primary and high school teachers as per the policy of the National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE).
They are only eligible for the post of teacher educators or higher education posts, including BEO etc. They said they have limited scope of employment.
The FM University has opened along with other universities of the State the Integrated MEd since the year 2017 with 50 students intake each year and the first batch has already passed out this year.
The students want that the State Government should apprise the NCTE about the difficulties and address their grievances.