New Delhi: Delhi University (DU) and the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), two of India’s leading universities, are struggling with the severe problem of providing accommodation to the extra crowd in their hostels. The major reason which resulted in swarming of students in these universities is the implementation Other Backward Classes (OBC) quota throughout all the educational institutions across the country.
With the 27% OBC quota to be implemented from this year, it was quite obvious to attract more students from outside states. Consequently, though the increase in the number of reserved seats would not narrow down those of the general category, but will affect the infrastructure severely. Also, the increasing demand for the hostel rooms has left these universities in soup, as no new hostel facilities would be available for the year 2010-11. Nevertheless, these universities are chalking out ways to strengthen the infrastructure.
DU, the biggest university in the country, with almost 80 constituent colleges, expects a huge crowd of outstation students and providing them with a hostel facility is a great challenge, as not more than 10 DU colleges have hostels. However, funds have been allocated by the DU administration, as it plans to construct some new hostels in the south campus, but there seems to be no construction work started as yet.
In case of JNU, which is considered as a residential campus, presently, it has 17 hostels including one girls’ hostel, which was added this year. The JNU administration is planning to add one more hostel with two wings, each for girls and boys. The administrative officials reveal that it should be ready by 2010 end.
As per sources, JNU expects around 2400 new students looking up for the residential facility in the campus, in the coming year. Sachidanand Sinha, Associate Dean of Students of JNU, said that the newly constructed hostel is likely to accommodate 544 students in 272 rooms. It is expected to come up by this year's end, but the problem of water and electricity connections is still an issue.
