Hostel protest spreads to OU campus, students detained

SECUNDERABAD: Tension prevailed on the Osmania University campus on Friday after several students were detained following their attempt to storm the administrative building to press for hostel allocation. The preventive detentions were enforced following a scuffle between the students and the security personnel, who blocked their entry into the building. Unconfirmed reports claim that one student sustained injuries in the incident.

The students staged a protest outside the administrative building, demanding immediate allocation of hostel accommodation to them. The police had to intervene and detain the protesting students to pre-empt any untoward incident on the campus, especially inside the university administrative building.

The OU protest comes in the wake of agitations by students of the Nizam College until a week ago and Secunderabad PG College on Thursday, all fighting for equal hostel accommodation on par with postgraduate students. The Secunderabad PG College students took out a procession upto the Paradise intersection and squatted in the middle of the busy road to press for their demand. Besides hostel accommodation, they also want basic Infrastructure and amenities for degree students in the college.

More than a week ago, it was the undergraduate students of Nizam College who first took to the streets over the hostel accommodation issue. To end their long drawn-out agitation, Commissioner of Higher Education Naveen Mittal even ordered a 50 percent hostel allocation to the undergraduate girl students on par with postgraduate students in the newly-constructed hostel block.