Hyderabad, January 29: Demanding introduction of Telangana Bill, thousands of students from city PG colleges and university campus came out on the road after boycotting their PG exams on Friday.
Due to mass boycott, only 5.68 per cent of students i.e. 864 students out of 15,206 registered students appeared on the first day of KU PG first semester exam.
The PG third semester is scheduled on Saturday.
In four districts of Warangal, Karimnagar, Adilabad and Khammam under Kakatiya University jurisdiction, the first day’s attendance rate was 2.3 per cent (law), 18.1 per cent (MBA) and 0.71 per cent for all PG first semester courses.
According to Prof. S. Ram Reddy, Controller of exams, out of 15,206 students appearing on the first day of PG first semester exam throughout four districts, only 864 students appeared, making it 5.68 per cent overall percentage.
Besides 18 exam centres in the campus, there were 56 exam centres, including 24 in the city, which had adequate number of police personnel, spread throughout the four districts.
Varsity sources said that out of 10,400 registered PG students for first semester, only 74 appeared.
The attendance rate for LLB was 13/546, LLM nil and MBA was 777/4,260.
Earlier, in both morning and afternoon sessions of the exams, as per their boycott call, more than 2,000 students in 24 city exam centres, one from Public Garden while another from SDLCE, marched out in the direction of Telangana Martyrs’ memorial in Subedari.
However, due to a lathicharge by paramilitary forces and civil police led by Hanamkonda SI M. Ravi Kumar on marching varsity students at Nayeemnagar area at about 100 metres from SDLCE, it led to a tense situation.
The lathi-charge left about 10 students, including a girl student, severely injured. To foil the students’ march towards the Martyrs’ memorial, police also took eight Kujac student leaders into custody and shifted them to Mills Colony police station.
Meanwhile, in protest against the police lathicharge, Kujac chairman S. Rajesh gave a call for bandh of all educational institutions on Saturday under KU jurisdiction limits.
“We did not resort to any violence yet the police resorted to the lathicharge leading to injury to 10 students,” said Rajesh, while condemning police action.
Later in the day, in protest against police lathi-charge on students, hundreds of people led by Ambati Srinivas, Narsempet divisional JAC convenor, halted traffic for more than two hours on the Narsempet highway.
–Agencies