NEW DELHI: Have you ever thought of getting a hostel room in any University for only Rs 10?
If not then visit the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), the only central University which continues to offer a hostel room to its students at minimal prices.
With 18 hostels and one complex for married students, JNU houses more than 5000 seats divided among the hostels. Going by the university administration, admission to these hostels is almost free of cost.
The total hostel charges to be paid at the time of admission is rs 1,625, out of which the admission fee of Rs 10, hostel security, mess security, mess advance, newspapers and crockery is Rs 800 – hostel and mess security are refundable while the mess advance is adjustable. So a student has to bear less than Rs 800 a year for a hostel seat.
However, the Dean of Students Welfare Sudhir Pratap Singh said, “To the best of my knowledge, 99.9% of the universities in India don’t charge such a minimum amount for a hostel seat and this is one of the reasons that we fail to maintain our hostels. The money we get as hostel charges from the students is too minimal to help us in any way.”
He further said, “Our hostels may be good but how do we maintain them when we don’t have any money from the UGC nor have we increased any fees for a long time. For a smooth functioning, there needs to be a corpus fund but that is missing here. However, we have got some amount after 20 years for hostel maintenance and the renovation work is in progress.” DSW also said that the hostel charges in other universities across the country are 200 times higher compared to JNU.