Students' turmoil at Nilamber Pitamber University has rung alarm bells for the officials, who are making hectic preparations to hold Convocation ceremony on October 14, when Governor cum Chancellor Ramesh Bais will be gracing the ceremony.
On Friday the university had a no-barred situation where a magistrate and a posse of police force had a tough time to control the passion of the agitating student leaders shouting for motley of demands.
Non-teaching employees were on dharna and so were the college teachers all for varied reasons on Friday in the university.
Officer in charge of the town police station Abhay Kumar Sinha said he had to rush to the university on Friday where the CO was already deputed. Sinha said that students had some long standing grievances. The chaos was because of those pending grievances.
Various students’ outfits, including the ABVP are raising 'doubts' about the expenditures going to be made for this grand event, the October 14 convocation.
It is the Rs 69 lakh budget for the convocation that everyone among the students wants to bite, said sources.
The students’ organisations are demanding transparency about the budget and its expenditures to be brought in the public domain, said sources.
Their other demand is that the doors of the convocation venue be opened to the whole of the enrolled students of this university.
There are a good number of colleges in this university where intermediate classes are done and these students of the intermediate classes can't be any sitters in the convocation opined university sources.
Sources said the university has a point in limiting the gathering as maintenance of law and order during such VVIP visits is handled by the district administration where the say of the university is just zero.
Space volume is decided on the size of the 'D' area in the visit of the VVIP and it is the district administration to decide the capacity of the gathering.
This correspondent tried to find out as to what made the students' bodies cry foul weeks ahead of the event.
Sources said that the university has very poor communication with either the press or with the students in general. Also, the budget worth Rs 69 lakh for the convocation is modest and in tune with the market and consumerism where prices of everything have spiralled up, reiterated the university sources.
Again the budget of the NP University for the Convocation is much lesser than many of the universities in the state for the same event, the sources.
Proctor of the university Dr K C Jha, who has been notified as official spokesperson for the convocation event said the vice chancellor and his team is determined to avoid any extravaganza and austerity measures are to be put in place but where expenses are mandated like pandal, souvenir, miscellaneous expenditures on the visit of the VVIPs etc there can't be any scope of compromising with the expenditures.
Jha said this time the cost of the pandal will be far less than the previous convocation held in 2017.
Pro vice chancellor of the NPU Dr Deep Narayan Yadav said some student outfits have some issues which the university with their support will tide over. Yadav said we are working at neck break speed to clear pending issues of the students related to their results of the examinations. End