Students, staff observe bandh, stage protest seeking adequate funds for Karnatak University

Karnatak Univ. students, staff stage demo to demand adequate grants; raise slogans against State govt & VC; threaten to intensify agitation if demands not met; protestors submit memo to Registrar urging govt to take remedial measures; demands include HRMS, pension, Indira Canteen, recruitment of guest & assistant lecturers.

Seeking the release of adequate grants for ensuring smooth functioning of Karnataka University, students and employees observed a bandh and staged a demonstration in Dharwad on Wednesday.

Under the aegis of Karnatak University Horata Samiti (Agitation Committee), students, university teachers, guest lecturers and non-teaching staff staged the demonstration in front of the administrative block of the university to press for their demands.

Raising slogans against the State government and Vice-Chancellor of the university, the protestors demanded the immediate release of adequate grants to bring the university out of the fiscal crisis. They threatened to intensify the agitation in the coming days, if their demands are not met.

Addressing the protestors, office-bearers of various organisations of employees complained that the university did not have enough internal resources to meet all the administrative and academic expenses and the government kept asking the university to mobilise funds through internal resources to meet all the expenses which is not possible.

As the government has failed to release the pending grants, the university has failed to disburse the pension of retired employees, salary arrears and scholarships, recruit temporary teachers and staff and distribute laptops, they said.

The protestors then submitted a memorandum to Registrar of the university Yashpal Ksheersagar and urged the government to take remedial measures at the earliest.

Their demands include inclusion of retired employees of Karnatak University under HRMS, continuation of pension as per Old Pension Scheme for employees who were appointed before April 1 of 2006 as in the case of government employees, establishment of Indira Canteen on university premises and recruitment of existing guest and assistant lecturers and outsourced employees to vacant teaching and non-teaching posts (650 teachers and 976 non-teaching).