Delhi Univ website crashes; chaos, protests mar Day I

The first day of the Delhi University (DU) admission process was marked by protest, chaos, website crashing and utter mismanagement. The admission began with much fanfare with thousands of aspiring students flocking to university campuses.

Such was the craze amongst the students that they started enrolling for admissions online a night earlier. DU’s official website crashed for a while due to heavy traffic. ‘Around 40,000 students tried to log-in at the same time and hence the website slowed down for a while. The online registration started a night earlier only’, said a DU official.

Due to heavy footfall at some of the centers, the authorities had to stop selling forms. 

There was a chaos-like situation at Daulat Ram College. The authorities had to close its gate to control the crowd. The officials also faced protest for selling forms at the college gate. However, they later clarified that it was being done as exams were going on in the college and the crowd could have disturbed the students.

‘There was an examination going on in the college. Also, there is a girls’ hostel in the college premises. In order to avoid any mishap, the college decided to sell forms at the college gate. Who’d have been held responsible in case of an unavoidable incident’, said the person on duty requesting anonymity.

St Stephens College, on the other hand, refused to entertain any of the aspiring students’ queries stating that their admission process is completely online. 

‘I went to St Stephens to enquire about the admission process. But I was turned down by the officials. They said that everything is there on the website,’ said Ankit Sharma, an aspiring student.

Total of 32,460 forms were sold across the 18 university centers. Out of which 3,129 forms were submitted on the first day itself. 

As far as the online process go, around 13,400 users registered by 5 pm and 2,300 payments were made signifying the submission of forms.

Meanwhile, the members of various student unions were seen protesting at the campus. While the Akhil Bharitya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) and All India Students’ Association (AISA) protested against the four-year undergraduate programme (FYUP), the National Students Union of India (NSUI) demanded better facilities for the universities. 

ABVP, student’s wing of Bhartiya Janata Party also burnt the effigies of Vice-Chancellor Dinesh Singh at all 18 centres and demanded roll back of FYUP at the earliest.