Visva Bharati students stage demonstrations

KOLKATA: Students held demonstrations and formed human chains before different 'bhavanas' (departments) of Visva-Bharati University at Santiniketan on Thursday demanding immediate reopening of hostels, which have been closed since the declaration of the lockdown in the third week of March 2020 due to COVID-19.

Visva-Bharati SFI unit spokesperson Somnath Sow said the university authority was deliberately delaying the reopening of 15 hostels of the central university despite the Calcutta High Court order. "While Visva-Bharati has issued notification for commencement of offline tests from tomorrow (March 11) it is yet to open the hostels. So how can the large number of outstation students write their examinations? Many of them are either forced to shell out huge amounts as lodging fees in guest houses or cannot return to the campus and appear in the offline examinations due to financial reasons," he said.