Govt: Students were not locked up during KTR's visit to Basara IIIT

Hyderabad: The Telangana government has denied that some students of Rajiv Gandhi University of Knowledge and Technology (RGUKT) Basara were locked up and not allowed to meet state minister K.T. Rama Rao during his visit to the institute on Monday.

An official said some vested interests seem to be spreading rumours about the minister's interaction with the students.

Minister for industry and information technology K.T. Rama Rao along with minister for education P. Sabitha Indra Reddy and two other ministers A. Indrakaran Reddy and V. Srinivas Goud visited the campus of RGUKT, also known as IIIT at Basara in Nirmal district. The campus recently witnessed a series of protests by students demanding an improvement in basic facilities.

KTR, as Rama Rao is popularly known, interacted with students to know their problems and promised to address them. He also had lunch with students and assured them that the facilities at the campus would improve soon.

Director, digital media, government of Telangana, Dileep Konatham, tweeted that some vested interests who seem to be disturbed by rousing reception and love and affection shown by students of RGUKT trying to spread factually incorrect information.

He was reacting to some media reports that 800 students were locked up during KTR's visit and were not allowed to meet him.

He pointed out that RGUKT has a total student strength of almost 8,000 students while Monday's meeting happened in an auditorium on campus, which has a capacity of about 1800-2000.

The official said to ensure maximum students get a chance to interact with the minister, the University management planned a lunch with a set of about 2,000 students. Later, a meeting with another set of about 2,000 students was planned in the auditorium.

He said to ensure other students also get a chance to listen to the speeches of ministers, screens were arranged in the adjoining hall. After the meeting was completed, KTR went into this adjoining hall also and interacted with students there.

He wrote that dozens of students took selfies with the minister and this includes students who were actively involved in recent agitation. No student was locked up or restrained by anyone, he added.

Addressing the students, KTR made five announcements in addition to the ongoing improvement works at the university.

He declared that he will visit the campus again in November along with the education minister to distribute laptops to students.

He requested sports minister Srinivas Goud to construct a mini stadium with Rs 3 crore, which would come up in six to eight months.

A state-of-the-art digital lab with 1,000 computers, 50 additional model classrooms and an innovation lab are the other announcements made by him.

To encourage the spirit of entrepreneurship, he requested RGUKT Vice Chancellor V. Venkata Ramana to establish an innovation lab and to hold week-long innovation celebrations every year.

He told the students that the problems at the University were being attended to one after another, and that it is being ensured to maintain the highest quality in providing the facilities.

KTR said that the response was not satisfactory for the tenders floated for mess contract, and a sincere effort was being put in to get a good contractor.

He appreciated the students for protesting peacefully, not allowing politicians to get involved, and for forming a student council to solve issues on their own.

Prior to his speech, the Minister KTR had lunch with students and interacted with them about their aspirations, and other topics.

Based on his interaction, he requested the education minister to introduce new age courses at the University. The students have asked for futuristic courses such as Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Space Technology, and others to reach high-ranking positions.