Students Demand Fee Reimbursement Implementation

Protests echoed outside the Telangana Assembly premises on Friday morning as 100s of students of student unions and wings of political parties including the CPI, marched towards the complex against the Private Universities Bill, 2015, that allowed private companies to set up colleges in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh for developing "world class" educational institutions.

A few students in the wee hours of Friday gathered outside the Assembly building and yelled slogans against the Bill and the non-implementation of the fee reimbursement scheme while waving the SFI and CPI flags. An alarmed Hyderabad Police quickly whisked the aggressors away even as the latter ran amok.

An hour later, the Police received a tip from an informed source that 100s of students are marching towards the Assembly gates from Nampally, Saifabad and other areas near to the Assembly. The cops nabbed several of the agitators and imposed a temporary curfew for all students entering the area.

Speaking to the media while being taken into police custody, several of the agitating students demanded that the Bill be revoked in the ongoing winter session. They said that private universities only increased fees and deprived government college students of job opportunities since several of these institutions were being set up in partnership with the recruiting companies themselves.

They also expressed their anger at the status of the fee reimbursement, and complained that they were facing several hardships as their financial burdens increased. They reminded Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao that they belonged to SC/ST and other minority communities and were only demanding what was promised to them.

Meanwhile, the police said that any student going towards Nampally from nearby areas, involved or not, needed to provide their identity cards. However the curfew would last only a few hours, they said.