New Delhi (31 March )। The 21-day lockdown in India’s decisive fight against COVID19 is having significant reverberations on the nation’s education sector. To shine the spotlight on such emerging problems, ABVP called on the Union Minister of Human Resource Development, Shri Ramesh Pokhriyal, and submitted a memorandum, requesting him to acknowledge the consequential issues and address them with sincerity and intense conviction.
Provision of online classes, holding the entrance, competitive, and semester examinations in abeyance until normalcy is restored, helpline numbers for stranded students to attend to their grievances in respect of food, accommodation, and commute, immediate release of grants, scholarships, and stipends for the students belonging to Divyang (differently-abled), Scheduled Castes and Tribes, Backward classes and other categories, cutting across primary, secondary and higher education levels, home delivery of midday meals, forbearance of fees for the upcoming semester, and constitution of committees to assess the impact of the lockdown on academia after the crisis subsides, were some of the demands enumerated in the memorandum.
Nidhi Tripathi, National General Secretary, ABVP, said, “We are in the midst of an unprecedented national crisis, with its corollary ramifications for the student-community, whose academic progress is being indubitably threatened. We have appealed for the scheduled entrance and competitive exams to be deferred until the pandemic ebbs and normalcy gets restored. That midday meals, being the only source of nutrition for a large segment of our student demography, should be delivered as door-to-door essential commodity was also highlighted. We hope that the government as well as the respective university administrations will do their best to expeditiously redress our grievances.”