Syed Ali Ahmed | India Tomorrow
NEW DELHI, MAY 4—The Jamia Millia Islamia university has asked its students stranded in its hostels, who could not go back to their homes earlier and stayed back, to vacate their rooms and leave for their native places as the university is making transportation arrangements as per the directions of the central government in this regard.
The excuse given for getting the hostels vacated is that the areas in neighbourhood of the university like Zakir Nagar, Jamia Nagar, Abul Fazal Enclave and Shaheen Bagh have been declared corona hotspots and no movements are being allowed in those areas.
The order to vacate the hostels have been issued by university registrar A P Siddiqui on May 1. The registrar in his order, also said that the “hostels are also required for sanitisation, maintenance and for contingent quarantine facilities”.
“Therefore, the hostels are required to be vacated completely with no exceptions”, the university order said.
The registrar, in its order, has asked provosts (boys and girls hostels) to initiate the process for getting the hostel vacated urgently.
As the university was shut down in March itself owing to the COVID-19 pandemic, the university order said that the university will reopen in August for regular students and new academic session will commence from September 2020.
“The examination schedules slated for July 2020 will be notified in due course”, said the order.
“At the moment, the university is closed for all practical purposes and library and other institutional facilities are closed down in view of the lockdown”, said the order. “However, the resource material for exams and research are accessible online”, the university order said.
However, students have opposed the university directive and appealed to the authorities to reconsider their decision before implementing it because the university has no transport arrangement of its own and there is also no assurance of security of the students during journey and until they reach their homes.
Azeem, a student from Jharkhand said that as per the Ministry of Home Affairs order, the special trains to be launched for students, migrant workers and stranded labourer would drop them only at the railway stations, nearest to their homes. He said that after reaching the railway stations or the bus stations, students would be quarantined in their respective states as per their local protocols where food and other facilities may not be adequate. He said that there was also no arrangement for escorting students from railways station and bus stations to their homes in smaller towns and villages.
Another student identifying himself as Torab from Bihar said the university has not taken responsibility of students’ security. “The buses and trains will drop at a particular point. How will they travel further to reach their homes, is not mentioned in the university order”, said Torab.
The students have also been issued a declaration proforma for vacating the hostels and travel to their home towns. They have been asked to fill up the proforma and submit it to the university.
The proforma supplied by the university says, “I declare that the decision to travel to my home town has been taken by me at my own responsibility and as per Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) guidelines.”
This means that the university is not responsible for anything that happens with the students en route to their homes because the decision to travel to his/her hometown has been taken by the student himself/herself as per the proforma form and every student has to fill it up before leaving the hostel.
University spokesperson Ahmed Azeem said that the order to vacate hostels has been issued. “But the process has yet not started. Provosts are finalizing the list. Students of each state will be transported together. The university is finalizing modalities to drop them at particular points in their respective home states. The students will not be dropped in between. Everything will be finalized after discussing the issue with the nodal officer. As far as train journey is concerned, it will de-board them at a station nearest to their homes”.
He said that students were earlier not asked to leave the university due to sudden announcement of lockdown. “Now they are getting a chance, they should leave. The university will be closed for two months. The new session will start in September. The university is facing difficulty for providing food arrangement as the kitchen in-charge is short of man power. He is unable to manage the supply of necessary food items”, said the spokesperson.
