A protest by senior students of the Indian Institute of Information Technology Bhopal entered the eighth day as 120 of them staged a sit-in on campus around Tuesday midnight demanding the appointment of a Director, a hostel facility and a training and placement cell.
Set up in 2017, the IIIT, among 15 such institutes of national importance declared as such by the Centre, currently functions out of the Maulana Azad National Institute of Technology (MANIT) campus, Bhopal. Besides the absence of a Director, it doesn’t have permanent faculty members, a building of its own and students’ council and clubs.
“Even IIITs in Bhagalpur and Surat, set up along with this one in 2017, have Directors. If we get one, everything will fall in place,” says a second year student. “The MANIT administration is rather indifferent to us as their focus is on their own students.”
ADVERTISEMENT
The lack of a training and placement cell has been a cause for worry, especially for third year students, who’re eagerly looking for internships and placement opportunities. “After the second year, most of us missed out on the internships. Only 40-50 out of the 118 students secured internships, that too on their own,” he said.
Girl and first-year students are accommodated at Rajiv Gandhi Proudyogiki Vishwavidyalaya, 15 km away, while boys rely on paying guest accommodations near the campus. “There is no space available at our hostels,” MANIT Director Narendra Singh Raghuwanshi told The Hindu .
The students have written to the Ministry of Human Resource Development stating their demands.
ADVERTISEMENT