OU boils again

Hyderabad: Osmania University (OU), the epicentre of Telangana agitation is in the news again. The students of OU called for a statewide ‘bandh’ of educational institutions on Wednesday. The bandh was called by Telangana Unemployed Joint Action Committee (TUJAC). The students are protesting against the regularisation of contract workers in Telangana.

About 500 students from the university central library took out a rally to University College of Arts and Social Sciences. The agitating students raised slogans against Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao (KCR) for his stand on the regularisation of contract workers. The protesting students burnt an effigy of KCR and demanded to roll back the decision to regularise contract workers.

The agitating students said that Telangana was achieved with sacrifices of the students. “No rule of reservation was followed and above all with political clout contract workers were appointed. Every time the chief minister talks about ‘bangaru Telangana’ (Golden Telangana), if the contract workers are regularised it would be called as ‘corrupted Telangana’ but not golden Telangana,” Praveen Kumar, a scholar said.

The students said that they were not against regularisation of class IV employees however, the jobs which were filled through TPSC shouldn’t be regularised.

“There are 10 lakh unemployed youth in the State, it’s been over 100 days since the government took charge, so far no job notification has been issued despite having 60,000 vacancies in various departments,” said Manavath Roy, president TUJAC.

Another student said that they were protesting since over one month but there has been no response from the government. “We are ready for a dialogue with the government, but there has been no response from the government for over one month. When we seek an audience, the government sends police personnel,” Ravi Kumar, a student lamented.

While the students claimed that the bandh was a success all over the State, it wasn’t the same in the capital. Bandh effect was hardly seen in the city, only OU constituent colleges and schools near the OU remained closed fearing backslash from the student community.

Just a day after orientation classes for the engineering students, the OU engineering college had to abort classes on Wednesday thanks to the bandh called by the OU. After a month delay, the engineering admissions were concluded and classes began on Tuesday.

The engineering students lambasted the government over the stalemate on regularisation of the contract workers. “The government should have a dialogue with the agitating students. If this issue is not resolved soon, more number of bandhs would be called by the students hampering academics of many,” a student of University of Technology said.

“We had to abort classes due to the bandh. However we would compensate the lost classes on Saturday. If required time duration of each class would be increased,” said Prof. VSS Kumar, principal College of Engineering, OU.