If there is no struggle, there is no progress —Frederick Douglass
The atmosphere at Himachal Pradesh National Law University, Shimla is quite tense with fretful students raising their grievances and demands after many unfulfilled promises by the administration. The peaceful protest has been ensuing for about two days.
In a thirteen-page-long letter released by the students, they have provided an extensive elucidation of a plethora of issues ranging from unhygienic food being served in the Mess to non-transparency in administrative functions. They have also quoted various rights granted to them under UGC Guidelines and Constitution of India.
The students firstly complain that unlike active bodies in other NLUs, there is lack of a student council or student body to address the points concerning students and the authorities are more than casual about setting up the same.
Further, non-conduction of workshops regarding Mooting and Debating, guest lectures, student exchange programmes, and seminars regarding legal infomation portals like SCC and Manupatra further add to the oblivion of students regarding the mandatory co-curriculars of a law school.
Lack of basic necessities include dearth of clean drinking water within the campus premises, deleterious mess food degrading the health of many students, no internet facilities in classrooms and ill-maintained hostels with no laundry equipments available.
The campus has even failed to provide the students with emergency medical facilities within the premises, in absence of which they are compelled to rush to a Community Centre which the university provides no transportation facilities for.
The neglect and laxity of the administration knew no bounds when few students even had to lose their scholarship opportunities and deal with a fee hike amidst all the furore for better amenities.
The academic setbacks of rude non-teaching staff, lack of resources in the library, no computer laboratory and IT professional to handle concerned tasks, faculty with lack of specialization in a subject still teaching it and no feedback mechanisms, failure of Internships and Placements Committee can also be observed.
Besides this, the societies and clubs which work tirelessly for organizing successful events all year round are unfortunately insufficiently funded. The university bus and a Traveller van for ferrying students have a capacity far less the strength of students they fetch.
All that the students ask for is a web-based University Management System, more library hours(also on Sundays), revealing information withheld by the administration, namely-monthly remuneration of employees, statements of Board meetings, and budget of all agencies with their expenditures. The students rightfully assert this right under RTI.
We publish this article with an earnest hope that these dire straits of students be resolved once and for all by the authorities as soon as possible. Given the fact that a good environment is mandatory for the holistic development for a student, we at Desi Kaanoon stand in solidarity with the students of HPNLU.
