Upping the ante against the Telangana government’s proposed auction of 400 acres of land in Kancha Gachibowli village adjoining the University of Hyderabad, 18 students on Thursday sat on a relay hunger strike calling for the preservation of the green patch as a lung space. Their demands: remove police from the campus, restore democracy, and drop the plan to auction the land.
Indianexpress.com spoke to some of the UoH students who sat on a hunger strike braving heavy rain in the afternoon. They say the campus has turned into a fortress or an open jail, with students not being allowed to even take out their phones and shoot photos and videos. They assert that the hunger strike will continue until the last bulldozer and the last labourer leave the campus.
(Source: X@KTRBRS)
Among the hunger strikers, Anugraha from the political science department says the students understand the gravity of their fight against the state-corporate nexusfacilitated by the UOH administration.
“Contrary to what (Chief Minister) Revanth Reddy claims, this land is not an industrial land. It is an environmentally, academically and culturally significant land as far as we are concerned. We understand and give importance to the political-legal fight, which is why we have reached out to civil society outside the campus. We are also aware of the need for large media attention. We have been standing together strongly and conducting several programmes to strengthen this movement,” says Anurgraha.
Another student, Aaditya of the physics department notes that the students union started the protest on March 13 and that they have been on an indefinite protest since Tuesday. “We are not going to go back an inch. Whatever comes, we are ready to face it.”
The students, led by the university students’ union, sat on a relay hunger strike at noon and another batch of students will take over at 8 pm. “The university administration is turning a blind eye. The V-C failed to take responsibility for the mistakes of the administration and only sugar-coated their position and nothing else,” she adds.
Students’ union cultural secretary Krishnamoorthy, who also sat on a hunger strike, says that selling or auctioning this forest-like land to the private sector does not serve the purpose for which then prime minister Indira Gandhi had allotted this land to the university.
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“This land is part of the entire 2,300 acres that the Indira Gandhi government kept aside after 369 Telangana students laid down their lives for a separate state in 1969. This Congress government should remember this. What the government plans now has no connection with education, academics or research,” Krishnamoorthy says, alleging that the government just wants to build another concrete jungle in the city’s IT corridor by clearing an actual jungle.
Vennala, a sociology PhD scholar, says one of the students who sat on an indefinite hunger strike on Wednesday night was taken away by the police late in the night. “Even after the (Telangana High) Court gave an interim order to pause the work on Wednesday afternoon, it continued late into the evening. Instead, now they have brought in a batch of labourers with chainsaw machines to fell trees. This is all happening in the presence of police while students are not allowed anywhere near. This is one reason why we have intensified our protest with a relay hunger strike,” she says.
Echoing similar views, Rajeev Kumar from the Hindi department says that nearly 75 per cent of the 400-acre land has already been cleared. “Till the earthmoving machines are in our campus, we will not stop our hunger strike,” he concludes.
© The Indian Express Pvt Ltd
