By TCN News,
New Delhi: Several students’ groups today organized a joint protest demonstration against Delhi University’s Four Year Undergraduate Programme (FYUP). Democratic Students’ Union (DSU), Campus Front of India (CFI) and Students’ Islamic Organization (SIO) jointly organized the protest from 11 am till 2 pm, wherein students from Delhi University, Jawaharlal Nehru University and Jamia Milia Islamia participated.
This demonstration began at the Arts Faculty and proceeded as a Protest March till the crossing in front of Ramjas College and Delhi School of Economics. Protesters blocked the road and raised our demands to scrap the FYUP immediately and burnt the effigy of the faces of neoliberal policies of the Indian State visible in DU through the privatization of education.
The university administration and the Delhi Police refused to allow the democratic protest to happen. But the student organizations, teachers and students of the university went ahead and participated in the demonstration despite repeated threats from the administration security and police. The students demanded to speak to the Vice Chancellor at the protest site but the administration agreed to send the Proctor. The protesting teachers and students refused to talk to anyone but the Vice Chancellor.
“This four-year programme is an anti-student educational reform that will adversely affect students coming from the SC/ST/OBC/Disabled and minority communities in many ways,” contend the protesters.
Earlier students body AISA has also organized a similar protest in the campus.
They demanded that such anti-student policies need to be scrapped immediately and genuine concerns of students like scholarships, hostels, women’s safety within the university, and filling permanent faculty vacancies numbering almost 5000 should be addressed.