Around 130 students, including 10 girls, studying at Yeragera postgraduate centre of Gulbarga university, around 20 kms from here, launched a strike in front of their campus gate on Monday morning as the University hostel mess was closed second time in the last 10 days, forcing them to go hungry.
The mess was shut on October 10, two days after it was opened on October 8, forcing most of the students to leave the campus for their native places. However, students from faraway place like Bijaprur, Bagalkote, Yadgir, Koppal and other districts continued to stay without food from the mess.
After a report on starving students at the campus appeared in The Hindu, it was reopened and the students who had gone for their homes returned to campus. The mess was, however, closed again after serving “poor quality and insufficient quantity” lunch on Sunday. The students who suffered without food on Sunday night and Monday morning impulsively launched agitation by blocking the camps gate.
Agitating students raised slogans against the university authorities holding them responsible for the inconvenience. They demanded that the University cancel the contract with the private party who the maintenance of hostel mess was outsourced to, and take the task on its own hands, as in the case of university hostel at Gulbarga campus.
The students said that the situation was relatively better during previous academic years when the postgraduate hostel and its mess was maintained directly by the University. “The both the quality and quantity of the food served by the contractor was too poor. When we questioned him, as we pay him Rs. 1,300 a month as mess bill apart from having paid one-time deposit of Rs. 2500, he simply closed down the hostel mess and forced us to starve,” said a student who did not want to be identified.
“We are finding it difficult to arrange outside-food as the centre is situated in a rural area with no hotels nearby. Frequent shutting of mess and insufficient and poor quality of food, are adversely affecting our studies. The university authorities are insensitive to our problems,” said another student. The contractor, he added, threatened the hostellers that he would commit suicide if they “harass” him by questioning the quality and quantity of the food being served in the hostel.
Special Officer of Yeragera Postgraduate Centre Mr. Bhaskar, who was on the spot, tried to convince the students by assuring them that the Registrar of the university would visit the PG centre next day and solve the issue. The students, however, said that they would continue the agitation till the officer's visit.
When The Hindu spoke to Prof. Chandrakant Yatanoor, the Registrar of Gulbarga University, he said that he would visit the Yeragera campus on Tuesday and resolve the problem. “We faced severe problem of non-availability labourers to run the Yeragera hostel and therefore outsourced it. Even the contractor is finding it difficult to maintain it. Everybody in the University is reluctant to take the charge as warden. Yet, we are managing it somehow,” he said.
