On the ninth day of admissions, a large number of clueless students continued to descend on Delhi University’s North Campus. Meanwhile, protests against the four-year undergraduate programme and costly application forms continued to contribute to the general noise. And, at Daulat Ram College centre, there was chaos over inadequate arrangement for forms for Persons with Disability and extra-curricular activities.
At the Arts Faculty gate, Poonam and Shobha sat for nearly two hours patiently waiting for the “counters to open” — where none existed — to purchase forms. “We have been here since 9 a.m. and the counters have not opened yet,” said a visibly agitated Poonam. It was around 11 a.m. by then. When told that the forms were available across the road, they slowly made their way to Daulat Ram College centre to buy forms, after spending two hours observing the anti-FYUP protest that was being organised by the All-India Students’ Association.
The AISA members were presenting a blueprint as to how students currently engaged in the FYUP could be “saved” when the programme was reverted to three years.
While members of the AISA as well as representatives from the Delhi University Teachers’ Association stood in the blazing sun and spoke about the FYUP, the intentions behind the programme, their struggles to get the course rescinded and the current political debate surrounding it, some members of the National Students’ Union of India, who were staunch supporters of the FYUP and the university administration throughout last year, sat under tents and claimed they were on hunger strike to seek revoking of the FYUP.
Some labourers carried a big banner with NSUI painted on it, and some boys, stylishly groomed and wearing thick sunglasses, loitered behind it.
The Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad took out a loud protest in Khalsa College for their costly sports forms. “The forms are being sold here for Rs.300, while in other colleges their price does not exceed Rs.20,” said ABVP national secretary Rohit Chahal, in the middle of some sloganeering.
Some confusion was also witnessed in Daulat Ram College, whichdid not make separate counters to sell extra-curricular activities forms. Instead, the same counter, which was selling the regular Optical Mark Recognition forms, was also selling forms for Persons with Disability and the ECA forms. A small hand-made cardboard stated that these forms were being sold here. This was unlike the other colleges, which had several help desks with volunteers to help with “ECA” enquiries.
