Teachers write to DU academic council, warn move to rename Dyal Singh (Evening) College could trigger land disputes

Unanimous decisions taken by the members of the AC, an apex body, are to be implemented in DU colleges.

On January 14, The Indian Express had reported that DU was considering renaming Dyal Singh (Evening) College, a move publicly flagged by Vice-Chancellor Yogesh Singh during his address on Vir Bal Diwas in December 2025.

According to faculty members, they were not consulted before the proposal was announced.
At the heart of the teachers’ objection is the claim that Dyal Singh College (DSC) is legally and administratively a single institution, with evening classes functioning under the same governing body and ordinances.

“We cannot afford to lose any more land or infrastructure, as this will cause serious degradation of the quality of education and facilities of our esteemed institution,” DSCTA wrote.

“There is one college, and evening classes of the same college, with the same governing body and ordinance,” the letter stated. “To open a new college with a different name, permission of UGC is required, which has not been taken, to the best of our knowledge.”

The association also cited clause 12 of the 1978 transfer deed, through which the college was taken over by DU. The clause, they noted, mandated that the entire land “shall continue to be called Dyal Singh College”, leaving no scope for a name change.

The letter placed particular emphasis on infrastructure constraints, citing the National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC). “The NAAC report points out ‘space crunch’ in our college,” the teachers wrote, noting that while the college has come up on 11.3 acres, only 8.3 acres is usable, with the rest covered by a drain.

The campus currently caters to around 5,500 morning college students, with another 2,500 students from the evening college sharing the same space and facilities. “Earlier, Dyal Singh College (Evening) used to start their classes after 2 pm… Now, they are running it as a day college resulting in overcrowding,” the letter stated.

The DSCTA argued that attempts to split the land or create two morning colleges on the same plot would be unviable. “All these efforts to bifurcate the college land… shall seriously degrade the health of both colleges and hence, the quality of higher education,” it warned.

Faculty members also invoked a failed renaming attempt from 2017, when the governing body had proposed renaming the college ‘Vande Mataram Mahavidyalaya’. That proposal was dropped after opposition, including a police complaint filed by then MLA Manjinder Singh Sirsa, who argued that the land belonged to the Dyal Singh Majithia Trust and could not house an institution under a different name.

The DSCTA said that precedent, coupled with a unanimous Staff Council resolution opposing any “bifurcation of college land”, should have foreclosed the current proposal. “Efforts are being made even now… to surreptitiously change the name of evening classes of DSC,” the letter alleged.