ABVP hold morcha against fee hike

August 9: The Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad ABVP today, held a Dhadak Morcha' at Azad Maidan to protest against the state governme...

August 9: The Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad ABVP today, held a Dhadak Morcha8217; at Azad Maidan to protest against the state government8217;s decision of increasing fees of the technical education courses. Students from the technical courses especially engineering students from all over Maharashtra participated in the agitation.

The students were addressed by the BJP minister, Nitin Gadkari and the student leaders. Later an eight member delegation led by Anand Mapuskar, state secretary, Maharashtra region and Swapnil Potdar, state secreatry, Vidharbha region presented the memorandum listing their demands to the Minister for Higher and Technical Education, Dilip Valse-Patil. According to the ABVP sources, the minister has promised to look into the matter. The ABVP had earlier met the minister on June 20 on the same subject but with no result. This time however they are giving an ultimatum of one month to the government to look into the matter.

Apart from the demand for the cancellation of the fee hike, the memorandum lists demandd of an audit report from colleges on how the fee is spent, a committee to check whether the colleges have enough professors, limited seats in non-aided colleges, fixing the fee according to the grade of the college etc.

This is the third agitation by ABVP who had gheraod the office of the Directorate of Technical Education on June 19 and had observed July 1 as Black day in this connection.

In May, the Government had announced the raise in the Engineering fee rates from Rs 4000 to Rs 10,000 for merit seats and from 32,000 to 40,000 for payment seats. And despite protests from student unions, Government had abstained from reducing the fee further as this was revised once already.

Meanwhile, a petition filed at the high court in this matter, came on hearing on June 30, but the court had abstained from giving a ruling as the subject is under consideration of an expert committee.

The government has cited this, as the reason for not commenting on the issue.

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National Students Union of India NSUI also had an agitation last week to protest government8217;s lack of response to their memorandum on the fee hike.