Tempers ran high and arguments were aplenty on Day Three of admission to Delhi University on Wednesday despite the queues getting shorter and the weather more pleasant. Parents argued with their children, student volunteers argued among themselves, nasty scuffles arose occasionally when someone tried to break the line and the traffic cops and university police had an altogether busy day.
The university had made available the option of buying a pre-admission form minus the information bulletin at Rs.20, which had earlier cost Rs.100 which created issues of another kind. “I did not know about this so I ended up buying the form and bulletin twice for Rs.200 because I made some mistake on the first form, my three friends also have this problem, so now we are trying to sell the bulletins,” said Sowmya Kaushik.
Several Delhi University hopefuls could be spotted outside every centre trying to get rid of their forms. Panic-stricken students armed with maps of Delhi University, courtesy of the university prospectus, rushed around madly to submit their forms before 1.p.m.
“We asked a simple question about a BA programme course at the counter in Arts Faculty, the man there asked us to go to the School of Open Learning, once there we were told to go to Miranda House where they simply told us to read the information bulletin. The course was listed there, all we had to do was highlight the course we wanted and submit it in the Arts Faculty. We had wasted almost two hours for this and finally when everything was cleared out, the counters closed at 1 p.m,” said Gittangalli, sitting on a park bench in the Arts Faculty.
Almost all pathways towards the centres selling forms were cut-off from traffic, with one-ways and police enclosures only adding to the madness.
“I was driving towards Daulat Ram College when somewhere near Miranda House I stopped at a traffic signal; a silver car behind me started honking and when I did not move, he started bashing my car. I panicked and moved to the right, a traffic cop landed there at that moment and started verbally abusing me, saying I was a woman and therefore should not be driving,” said an English Professor from Zakir Husain College who then proceeded to the Maurice Nagar police station where she says the cops were “nicer” and told her she would have to do a lot of running around to register a case. “I went instead back to the cop along with another colleague and we tried to tell him how to behave with women, he got angrier and came very close to me and told me not to take advantage of my status as a woman,” she added, saying that the other cops were nicer to her and she had filed a written complaint to the proctor.
