In a memorandum to the team of Union HRD Ministry, the local students said the demand for permanent presence of central security forces at the institute could make it vulnerable to disturbances owing to political events outside the campus.
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The Ministers and HRD officials, however, assured the students that their genuine demands, including better amenities inside the campus and improved academic atmosphere will be addressed. Demanding impartial probe into the harassment of Kashmiri students outside the Kashmir, Naeem said, “We want safety of Kashmiri students who are studying in NIT and outside the state”. Trouble had broken out at the campus when groups of local and outstation students clashed following India’s defeat at the hands of West Indies in the semi-final match of T20 Cricket World Cup.
The situation is calm but the outstation students are seemingly still on protest, Registrar, NIT Srinagar, Fayaz Ahmad Mir told PTI. “I was threatened by Kashmiri girls of my class to attend classes, otherwise we will be raped and molested by the locals”, she said. They also demanded that the national flag should be unfurled at NIT-Srinagar.
The NIT administration has also decided that students will not need to obtain permission to celebrate festivals at the campus.
#As it became clear to him that he wouldn’t be allowed to meet the students, he tweeted: “Dear NIT Srinagar students: Your courage has been Loud & Clear”. However, these students have already been given the option of re-examinations in case they fail to appear.
NIT was founded as a regional engineering college in 1960 and was under the control of the Kashmiri state government until 2004 when it was renamed and taken over by the federal government’s ministry of human resource development (HRD).
Remaining students, who want to go, may also submit their details so that necessary action may be taken, he said.
The Jammu and Kashmir Police, established in 1873, is in charge of law and order in 22 districts spread across an area of 85,806 sq km.
The local police, accused of thrashing outstation students, is virtually invisible.
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“Jammu and Kashmir Police doesn’t discriminate on the basis of who’s local and who’s non-local. The faculty is not good to us and we are scared of the police”, one of them said.
