Thiruvananthapuram: Kerala University has decided to hand over the running of hostel messes in Kariavattom campus to outside agencies through a contract from April. The mess was being run by committees comprising students. The decision to hand over the mess to outside agencies was based on the finding that juniors were given heavy work in the mess as part of ragging. This was a result of the report submitted by R Dilip, joint registrar of campus administration, on the complaint filed by Rajesh Babu, a first year MSc department of computational biology and bioinformatics, that he was ragged by Rahul G Dev, a second MA student of Department of Linguistics.
The friction in the incident had occurred during the making of Chappathis, a group activity in the mess done exclusively by students. The report also pointed out that junior students were also asked to collect firewood from the campus for the purpose of cooking in the hostel mess. It is understood that the firewood was being used to reduce expenses towards the purchase of cooking gas. A committee will be constituted in each hostel comprising the Warden of the Hostel with elected inmates from each hostel.
