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Hansraj College Hostellers Lock Down Mess

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In response to deteriorating food quality, residents of the Hansraj College Hostel have boycotted the mess.

On 29th February 2020, the students of Hansraj College residing in the hostel decided to stop the consumption of food made in their mess and proceeded to lock the mess from outside. This action, they said, was taken in response to the poor quality of food they were being served for the past few weeks.

“For the past three weeks, the non-teaching staff (the mess workers) have been on strike. Since then, we haven’t been served food as per the menu. The mess now operates on a self-service basis, and we’re only being served basic food like rice and dal. The food quality is terrible. As a result, it was decided that we won’t have lunch from today, and while lunch was cooked, no one ate it and we went and locked the mess.” said Vinay Pratap Singh, a resident of the hostel and a student of Hansraj College.

The students then had a meeting with the warden where they laid down their demands. “We have multiple demands because there are a lot of problems, but our basic demand right now is a bringing back of normalcy. While we understand that mess workers cannot come back right now, we should at least be hiring new cooks from outside. This is also something that had been promised to us by the warden but hasn’t been done for the past seventeen days. This is a very serious problem because the food not being cooked properly is also negatively affecting people’s health. We won’t be wasting the already cooked food though, we’ve asked the warden to have the food given to needy through the Hansraj National Service Scheme (NSS)”, Vinay added.

The students met with the principal in the evening who tried to reach out to the Workers’ Union, who have declined to come back to work at the moment. What remains to be seen is how the administration responds to the demands and how these protests affect those made by the Staff Union. For the moment, though, the lockdown has been called off.

 Image Credits: Hansraj College Website

Khush Vardhan Dembla

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DU’s Left Collective Protests against Lockdown in Kashmir, Remembers Professor S.A.R. Geelani

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Amidst sloganeering and illustrating placards, Left Wing collectives from Delhi University (DU) including All India Students’ Association (AISA), PACHHAS, Pinjra Tod, and Students’ Federation of India (SFI) organised a protest, and a memorial for Kashmir Lockdown and SAR Geelani respectively at art faculty today.

“Kunan Pashpora yaad karo, AFSPA nahi chalega (Remember Kunan Pashpora, Bring Down AFSPA)” and similar slogans ran throughout the protest organised to commemorate the memories of S.A.R. Geelani, an Arabic language professor from Zakir Hussain College who passed away on 24th October following a cardiac arrest. Geelani was a controversial figure; a native of Kashmir he was first convicted but subsequently acquitted in 2001 Parliament attack case.

On Tuesday, various student organisations from DU including the likes of AISA, PACHAS, Pinjra Tod, and SFI organised a protest at Arts Faculty to celebrate him. Simultaneously, protesters also brought back the diabolical memories of Kashmir Lockdown which completed 100 days on 13th November.

On merging two separate incidents into one protest Nandita Narain, the former President of Delhi University Teachers’ Association (DUTA), told DU Beat that because Professor Geelani was also a Kashmiri who felt deeply for the valley it would be befitting to combine both the events. On asking if yesterday’s Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) protest has defoliated the amount of attention this should have gotten, Professor Narain said, “ All these things are related. The policy that the government is following are connected with each other. JNU students must be extremely traumatised and busy with their own protest otherwise whenever we call for a protest, they always come in large numbers.”

Remembering his late friend, Professor Rakesh Ranjan told in his speech how much Professor Geelani felt for political prisoners who get framed wrongly. About Kashmir, Ranjan said that Geelani always believed that Kashmiris will decide for Kashmir themselves. He added, “If we want to defeat fascism, we’ll have to strengthen democratic right movement in this country.” His speech ended with crowd cheering the slogan, “Long Live  Right to Self Determination”

Talking to DU Beat, Abhigyan, former Delhi University Students’ Union (DUSU) Presidential candidate,  lashed out at Government’s repulsive behaviour towards Kashmir as the valley enters 107th day of lockdown. He said, “The way Kashmir was made a UT by abrogating 370 following which the way in which opposition voices were crushed there, it’s evident that this is not just a mean to curb dissent but also democracy wholly.”

Amidst the protest, a reporter from Zee News got heckled while she tried to talk to the protesters. The enraged protesters turned hostile towards her claiming that the channel reported lies against Professor Geelani, and did biased covering on the abrogation of Article 370.

Feature Image Credits: AISA Delhi University (Facebook)

Priyanshu

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