More than 1,900 students of Maulana Azad National Institute of Technology, as well as hundreds of students from the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, have made pleas to the authorities of the respective institutions and the district administration to save their careers.

Student hostels on the campuses of MANIT and IISER have been acquired by the district administration of Bhopal to be used as care and quarantine centres for coronavirus patients, according to students who have been on agitation for more than a week.

Some of the teaching faculty living on the campuses expressed their concern over the risk of them or their aged parents contracting the disease.

The students of MANIT addressed a memorandum to the director of the institute, in which they expressed their fears that academic activities may not be resumed for six months, given that the coronavirus situation was steadily exacerbating in Bhopal.

“There is likelihood that total eradication and containment from COVID-19 may take several months. If whole campus of MANIT, Bhopal is turned into COVID-19 quarantine centre, we don’t foresee our classes being commenced in near future at least within six months,” the memorandum said.

According to the students, nine out of eleven student hostels have been occupied for use as quarantine centres.

Siva Umapthy, the director of IISER said in a communique dated 25 May, “The collector and district magistrate, Bhopal under the powers conferred by the ‘The Madhya Pradesh Epidemic Diseases, Covid-19 Regulations 2020” published under Epidemic Diseases Act has acquired all the buildings of the institute to use some of them as COVID care centres/quarantine centres. 

“The district administration will thus only convert some of the hostels as COVID care centres temporarily,” he said.

Anand Goleit, a student of IISER said, “The institute administration had told us that before removing the belongings it would inform us at least four to five days in advance but we came to known on June 6 that the locks of our rooms were broken and our belongings stuffed in almirahs in the rooms and mattresses elsewhere. Now, we are concerned about our documents including passports and other valuables like laptops, etc.”

The Dean of Students Affairs said that they did not lodge any protest as the district administration had made its decision because of the pandemic.

Dr. JL Bhagoria, the Dean of Students’ Welfare at MANIT said, “There is no likelihood of belongings of the students lost as we formed to committee to supervise the whole process but, of course, we have submitted a memorandum to the district administration to exempt our campus from being used as a quarantine centre. There is no response so far.”