The Gandhigram Rural Institute (GRI) near here was closed indefinitely on Monday. All students, including those staying in the hostels, were asked to vacate the college campus by 5 p.m.
The reopening date will be announced later, but the convocation will be held on Tuesday as per schedule, according to officials. Earlier, a section of students, including some postgraduate degree holders, staged a demonstration condemning the authorities for the delay in taking action on their demand for getting their degrees recognised by the Teachers Recruitment Board (TRB) and refused to leave the premises.
They alleged that the Vice-Chancellor had not attended the higher education council meeting in Chennai in keeping with his promise to sort out the issue. On Friday, the students staged a demonstration to urge the authorities to prevail upon the TRB to accept their degrees and provide jobs to those who had passed the recruitment test. Meanwhile, heads of various departments informed the agitators that the GRI had sent two professors to raise the issue at the higher education council meeting in Chennai. They pointed out that the State Government had recognized the degrees and the details are available on the official web site.
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Ten postgraduates in Tamil Literature, seven in English Literature, two in Economics and three in Microbiology had passed the TRB examinations, meant for the post of PG teachers, recently. Some received appointment orders in Chennai while others got theirs during the district-level online counselling. But the school headmasters refused to accept the certificates, pointing out anomalies in nomenclature of the degrees, and withdrew the appointment letters.
Education Department officials reportedly wanted the degree certificates in the name of either English Literature or Tamil Literature and not in any other nomenclature.