Jagannath University (JnU) students have taken positions in front of the Secretariat with a set of five demands, including handing over the construction of the second campus of JnU to the army and including JnU in the UGC’s pilot project on Monday.
Students conducted a mass march towards the Ministry of Education where around two thousand students from the university participated. When a delegation of students wanted to submit a memorandum to the ministry, the secretary refused to meet them. At one point, the protesting students staged a sit-in in front of the Secretariat.
According to their five point demands, they want the project director of the second campus be brought under law enforcement and construction be handed over the army within seven days; education ministry have to declare a statement clearing the matter of hand over to army and its process; immediate actions should be taken to acquire the remaining 11 acres of land and cancel all the agreements of the previous government regarding the campus; Jagannath University must be included in the recently announced UGC pilot project; A minimum annual budget allocation of 5 billion BDT must be provided for the university.
Nausheen Nawar Joya, a student of the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, said, “Dormitories are being constructed for various universities, but we JnU students are falling behind. We demand that the second campus project be assigned to the army. The pilot project undertaken by the UGC is discriminatory.”
A.K.M. Rakib, the organizer of the movement, said, “Today we will submit a memorandum to the ministry. Additionally, we will give an ultimatum of three working days. If these issues are not resolved within this period, we will be compelled to announce even stricter actions.”
The spokesperson for the movement, Tausib Mahmud Sohan, said, “We will give the Ministry of Education a three-day ultimatum regarding our demands, and prioritizing Jagannath University in the HEAT project they must provide a written commitment by the end of today.”
He added that the Secretary had said he could not meet with them, so they were staging a sit-in in front of the Secretariat.
