Hyderabad, July 10: With students boycotting mess facilities as a part of the protest against the hike in the mess bill, the Osmania University administration has come to negotiating terms with the students.
Some time ago, students had participated in a relay hunger strike urging the OU administration to increase the social welfare scholarships of deserving students. They also demanded that the administration should drop its plan of collecting the accumulated fee of research scholars before they finished their courses.
It is in this regard that the Vice-Chancellor of the university T Tirupati Rao held discussions with the representatives of Research Scholars and Student unions on Thursday afternoon to drive home the University’s concern and plan of action with a view to find an amicable solution to the problem.
Explaining that the university needed to cope with emerging challenges, he pointed out that the situation was alarming as the accumulated mess dues of the students and research scholars amounted to Rs 1.5 crore over the last five years and added that nonpayment of dues over the years had become a burden to the university. “Many of the colleges affiliated to the university have been strained of financial resources and there are strong audit objections from the State Audit department,” T Tirupati Rao said. However, after considering the requests from the students and research scholars, he expressed his readiness to consider the genuine representations of individual research scholars for lesser payment maintaining that the university would monitor the progress of research students at regular intervals.
During the discussion, the Vice- Chancellor appealed to the students and student unions not to disrupt the smooth functioning of the University and extend cooperation for promotion of academic excellence.
Meanwhile, some students raised objections about the functioning of the administration.
“The Vice-Chancellor is worried about the Rs 1.5 crore mess bill of research scholars. But why is he not answering any questions about the pending Rs 50 crore grants from the State government,” questioned a member of Progressive Democratic Students Union.
–Agencies–