Congress party’s student wing, the National Students’ Union of India (NSUI), has decided to go the Modi way by intensifying its online campaign and grievance redressal system for college and varsity-goers.
For the purpose, the Chandigarh and Punjab chapter has chosen Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi’s visit to this part of the region a day before. NSUI has also announced its decision to make its online campaign — Sadda Haq — all the more effective by complementing it with a signature campaign.
The decision comes at a time when Prime Minister Narendra Modi is regularly addressing the public while referring to suggestions received by him through emails. The move is aimed at taking the people along and giving them the impression that “we are here for you”. After the successful run of its ‘Sadda Haq’ online campaign — launched two months back — aimed at fighting for the students’ rights, the NSUI is now all set to start its signature campaign across all varsities and colleges in Punjab and Chandigarh on October 20.
“We are going to start our signature campaign as a part of our Sadda Haq campaign on October 20. The campaign will be started in all universities including Chandigarh’s Panjab University, Patiala’s Punjabi University, Amritsar’s Guru Nanak Dev University, and all other universities and colleges affiliated to them in Punjab and Chandigarh,” NSUI general secretary in-charge of Punjab and Chandigarh Nigam Bhandari told The Pioneer.
For the purpose, the NSUI would form teams for every institution which would “aware students of their rights and also give a platform to them to air their grievances”.
Bhandari said that the NSUI’s online campaign has received satisfactory response in the past two months of its launch. “We have our executive meeting few days back where we evaluated the ongoing campaign, and results were satisfactory…we are getting good response,” he said. Sadda Haq campaign, Bhandari elaborated, mainly focuses on the basic issues that students are facing in Punjab, and also Chandigarh.
The campaign was rolled out after various issues were raised by the students through their feedback forms across the state. “We realised that students have lot of issues which need to be addressed systematically. We went through all these issues and picked up the crucial ones which matters the most,” added another NSUI member.
Under the campaign, the issues like direct elections for student councils in all educational institutions in Punjab, free education to poor students, transportation facilities especially to rural students, free laptops as promised by the SAD-BJP government before 2012 polls, wi-fi provisions, counseling against drugs, career guidance, improving scholarships for SC, ST or OBC students, 24X7 helpline for girls, government helpline for students to hear their issues have been included.
In addition to these, the Punjab Chapter has included some other major issues related to the students in the state including uniformity in fee structure, institutes giving their budgets online, coaching for IElTS at Government headquarters, among others. “We are moving ahead step by step…and signature campaign is the second step towards our motive of giving students their rights,” said Bhandari.