Since 2019, CUK without hostel facilities for students, scholars

The Central University of Kashmir (CUK) has been without hostel facilities for the last three years, leaving the students high and dry.

The complaints are pouring in from PG students and the scholars against the varsity administration for its failure to provide hostel facilities to the students.

A group of students told news agency—Kashmir News Observer (KNO), that the University administration has failed to provide the hostel facility to the students coming from other districts of north and south Kashmir.

"The university has kept a bus facility available but that is not convenient for all the students particularly those living in far off areas," the students from north Kashmir, said.

The students have approached the varsity administration a number of times only to return disappointed.

"The officials only convince us with verbal assurances and later forget about it," the students said.

A CUK official said the University would earlier provide hostel accommodation to more than 300 students when it was functioning from accommodations.

"Even we had set up hostel facilities for students after shifting to Ganderbal. But post August 2019, the district administration took over the buildings to accommodate the protected persons," the official said.

He said the University had converted the CMO Building at Ganderbal, provided by the government, into a hostel facility for the student.

“But the building was taken over by the district administration to accommodate protected persons after DDC elections were held here in Valley,” the official said.

Even a private building hired by the CUK administration for hostel use has also been taken away by the district administration, the official said.

“We have written to the district administration and the LG administration a number of times but we never got these buildings back," the official said.

Meanwhile the students complained that they are not being provided the facilities which should be available at the highest seat of learning.

A top official in the CUK administration said the varsity was aware about the problems faced by the students in terms of hostel and other facilities.

"We are aware about the problems faced by the students and we are trying our best to resolve all the issues," the official said.

He said the government has provided an additional land of 94 Kanals to the University for construction of buildings.

"But we are planning to construct our own hostel blocks there along with some residential staff quarters. But it will take us some time to overcome the problem. We hope students will cooperate with us," the official said—(KNO)