Months after the agitation at the Kerala Law Academy in Thiruvananthapuram, another self-financing law college is embroiled in student unrest.
Bhavan’s N.A. Palkhivala Academy for Advanced Legal Studies and Research (Bhavan’s PALSAR), Ramanattukara, has been closed indefinitely after students launched a protest against what they termed as “illegal fee hike”. A reconciliation talk mediated by Ramanattukara Municipal Chairman Vazhayil Balakrishnan on Wednesday failed to reach a consensus.
A.T. Sarjas, area committee president of Students Federation of India, told The Hindu that the management had declined their demand to reduce the annual fee for merit quota students from ₹57,000 to ₹25,000. He said that they had filed a complaint with District Collector U.V. Jose seeking government intervention to solve the issue.
P. Parameswaran, director, Bhavan’s PALSAR, however, claimed that the fee structure was devised as per the recommendations of the fee regulatory committee. He alleged that some outside forces were trying to close down the college. “Some of the students have not paid the fees for years. Ours is a self-financing college, we can’t run it if students do not pay fees,” he said.
Meanwhile, Mr. Sarjas claimed that the management had misguided the committee and hiked the fee without improving the infrastructure on the campus. “We are continuing the strike demanding that the facilities be improved and the campus be shifted to another location after renewing the affiliation.”
The students have been on an indefinite strike since June 12.
The college authorities had been involved in controversies earlier too. In April, they had served a memo on Mr. Sarjas, accusing him of “cooking and distributing beef on the campus.” The notice also alleged that he had organised girl students to create tension.
Refuting the charge, Mr. Sarjas, a seventh semester student of the five-year LLB course, alleged that he was being targeted for being involved in students’ issues. He said that an inebriated person had behaved improperly with girl students while they were in the hostel bus. A video of the act had gone viral on the social media.
A group of students staged a sit-in protest on March 21 seeking security for girls at the hostel and he was part of it.
