Twenty-eight disabled students and seven disabled teachers led by the “Sambhavana” organisation sat on a day-long hunger strike outside the Delhi University Vice-Chancellor’s Office on Friday to protest the “insensitive and callous attitude” of the authorities towards their long-pending grievances.
They alleged that they were not allowed to protest in peace as there was heavy police presence. “Today the authorities not only disallowed tent facility, but even stooped down to the level of intimidation and threat to the disabled participants and their escorts,” alleged Sambhavana president Prof. Nikil Jain.
“We want the university to constitute an empowered committee for preparing a time-bound action plan for the redress of our grievances, which includes the failure of the university to meet various legal provisions for disabled persons. Secondly, we wanted the university to announce the date of a disability summit,” added Prof. Jain.
The Equal Opportunities Office OSD Bipim Tiwari responded thus: “I am a person with 75 per cent disability. By staging such baseless protests they are infringing upon my right to discharge my duties and disrupting the initiatives being taken by the university.”
