Meals, a staple menu at all eateries, were not served at the Anna University canteen on Sunday even though counselling for engineering aspirants was on at the campus. Reason: the canteen faces a water shortage. In order to tide over the problem, the canteen resorted to serving ‘variety’ rice in paper plates. The canteen, it must be noted, is usually where people from all over the State - running into thousands - converge after attending TNEA counseling.
Canteen manager and proprietor Narayanan told Express that water shortage continues to be a perennial problem.“We have done away with serving meals as it consumes more water for cooking and cleaning the plates. Hence, we had to stop serving meals,” he said.
“We had even dug two borewells at our own cost, but are unable to use the water fully, as it is being diverted for the hostels in the campus.” The hostels, he says, face acute water shortage, which led to a furious protest by students not too long ago. The problem could not have come at a more inopportune moment. These are initial days in the general category counseling, which would last till July-end, and footfalls are only expected to increase. Daily footfalls at the canteen, which hover around 1,500-2,000 have now shot up to 4,000, says Narayanan.
In fact, TNEA secretary Rhymend Uthariaraj had indicated a few days ago that the number of candidates attending the counseling per day, which was around 1800 on day one, would gradually scale up to 6-7,000. The canteen, ever since counselling began, has been selling an average of 2,000 idlis, 800-900 chapattis daily. Neither the Dean of College of Engineering Guindy, M Sekar, nor V-C Anna University, M Rajaram, could be reached for their reactions.