HILL STUDENTS’ DENIED HOSTEL FACILITIES AT NBU – Demand Fair Calculation of Distances

Hill Students’ Association, North Bengal University today submitted a deputation to the Registrar of the university, demanding fair calculation of distances when considering application for hostel rooms.

The students from Darjeeling hills, Terai and Dooars used to have hostel rooms given on priority, considering the actual distance needed to travel to NBU, difficul geographical conditions, physical remoteness of the place from where students would come etc. However, students allege that since the past few years, the NBU administration has only noted the distance denoted in the Google Map, without considering the actual time taken for reaching NBU, while allocating the hostel rooms.

Because of this, majority of the hill students are being deprived of hotel rooms by NBU authorities.

In their petition, the students have demanded “methodology applied while granting of hostels’ seat be changed from measuring geographical distance to time by which we mean that instead of distance calculated in the google map app you calculate the time in the same app (reasons already given in the earlier petitions).”

They have further noted that, “if this procedure is complicated to follow then we simply demand that seats in the hostel be reserved for the students of the hills in percentage corresponding to the number of hill student vis-a-vis the total amount of the student in the university, which will be around 50%.”

We request all hill based political parties, politicians affiliated with TMC, BJP, Congress and other national parties to also speak out.

This is why, we need a CENTRAL UNIVERSITY in the hills, so that our students are not deprived and discriminated against this way.