Protests against DU’s FYUP: NSUI sits on hungerstrike

In an interesting turn of events, just when the Human Resource Development Ministry (HRD) is set to ask standing committee of University Grants Commission’s (UGC) to review the possibilities of scrapping Four-Year Undergraduate Programme (FYUP), some leaders of Congress-backed National Students’ Union of India (NSUI) has sat on a hunger-strike demanding its roll back.

Interestingly, it was during the Congress regime that the controversial programme was introduced by the government amid reservations from various quarters of the university. It can be noted that the NSUI has never protested against FYUP even as other student organisations have been voicing their dissent for over a year now. ‘We were never against FYUP. In fact when it was launched we did not raise any objection. But over the course of the year and after taking a lot of feedback we realised that students are not happy with the course’, said Ankit Dedha, national secretary of NSUI.

The BJP’s student wing Akhil Bhartiya Parishan (ABVP) also protested outside the UGC office to up the ante against the controversial programme. ‘University ke acche din aney wale hai (Good days for the university is coming soon),’ shouted ABVP national president Rohit Chahal.

ABVP along with senior leaders of BJP has been protesting against FYUP for over a year now. ‘The university didn’t hear us. But now, the HRD ministry has referred the matter to UGC. Very soon it will be rolled back,’ Chahal added. The committee was set up by the UGC last year after pressure from the anti-FYUP brigade. The task of the UGC panel was to monitor the implementation of the programme, since it deviated from the 10+2+3 national education policy.

‘The UGC has not bothered to do a quality-audit of the FYUP. There is no infrastructure in colleges to cope up with the burden of the added year’, the Delhi University Teachers’ Association (DUTA) said.

ABVP has asked for the rollback before the start of new academic session in DU which is set to take off in July.

The BJP unit had promised to scrap the controversial programme in its poll manifesto for Delhi.