Hyderabad: The ruling Telangana Rastra Samiti is trying to break the ice with students of the Osmania University, who have been unhappy with the government over the delay in issuing job notifications and not clearing the Rs 7 crore mess charges arrears. At the time of the separate Telangana movement, the OU students had been one of the TRS’ greatest strengths.
Matters had come to such a pass that the students were obstructing any TRS leader from entering the campus to take part in various programmes. On Friday, Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao approved the clearing of long-pending mess charges arrears at one go, for which the students had been agitating since the past 15 months. Not only this, Mr Rao announced that fine quality rice would be supplied to all hostels in government colleges and universities so that the students get quality food.
The government had started supplying fine rice to students in government welfare hostels since January this year, at a cost of Rs 700 crore per year. The OU mess charge arrears of Rs 7 crore were accumulated between 2005 and 2014. Mr Rao had made a statement in the Legislative Assembly in November 2014, promising to clear the mess charges arrears immediately.
However, no funds were released even after a year leading to agitations on the campus. Among Friday’s announcement was a direction to officials to train students for competitive exams through SC, ST, BC study circles. The Chief Minister also directed officials to train students for Groups recruitment exams besides national-level exams and TOEFL, GRE etc.
Mr Rao asked officials to take up extensive campaign on government scheme providing financial assistance to SC, ST and minority students to pursue foreign education and ensure that the benefit reaches more students.
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