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| NIT clashes: Rajnath asks Mehbooba to ensure students safety | | Mehbooba rules out shifting NIT from Srinagar | |
Agencies
NEW DELHI, Apr 12: As the non-Kashmiri students have started leaving the strife-torn NIT campus in Srinagar in droves, Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh has asked Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti to ensure a safe atmosphere for the non-local students
Mufti arrived in the capital this afternoon for her first meeting with the Home Minister after assuming charge as the Chief Minister to discuss a host of issues with respect to her state. Singh is said to have expressed concern over the "non-conducive atmosphere" for the outstation students as a result of clashes with the locals and "brutal" lathicharge on them by the Jammu & Kashmir police.
During the discussion, both leaders converged on the need of creating conducive conditions for all students so that outstation as well as local students can study together and clashes do not recur. Sources said the J&K CM and the Home Minister also spoke of creating a "consultative" mechanism so that students leaving the campus and their courses could be convinced to stay back and resume the pursuit of their career.
The Chief Minister assured the Home Minister of safety of all students.Speaking to the media outside, Mufti played down the situation in NIT campus in Srinagar, saying,"The students have left for homes because they could not prepare for the exams because of the prevailing environment and HRD Ministry is looking into it. Some are saying the campus should be shifted but that is not the case."The trouble started on March 31 when Kashmiri students started celebrating the defeat of India in T20 Cricket World Cup against the West Indies and outstation candidates protested. This led to clashes and the National Institute of Technology(NIT) was shut down.
The outstation students also staged marches and hoisted the tricolor, the national flag. On April 5, the students alleged local police beat them "brutally." The police on other hand alleged that they were trying to take their protest march out of the campus and some of them even indulged in stone-pelting. The Centre quickly deployed the CRPF troops which contained the situation, but could not convince the students to stay on.
On the first day of the exams yesterday, only about 500 students out of nearly 2000 outstation students have appeared. Most of them have started packing off for their home, saying they will not return, unless they are shifted to a new campus outside Srinagar.
Reports say those who are staying back are final year students who have no option but to complete their course and juniors who are vacating hostels say they can not risk staying any further for another one or two years in the given "hostile atmosphere.
"The HRD ministry also had sent its team to listen to the grievances of the students who remained adamant on discontinuing their studies if government failed to provide them a separate campus, possibly in Jammu.
While outstation students have called the approach of faculty and HRD team biased against them, some reports suggest the Kashmiri students have also termed the HRD team as biased and lending an ear to outstation students only.Meanwhile the separatists leaders have today given a shutdown call in the Valley against reported thrashing of Kashmiri students in different institutions in the country in what appeared to be tit for tat attacks. |
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