NEW DELHI: The Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) and the Delhi University Students Union (DUSU) on Tuesday jointly submitted a memorandum to the DU registrar and the members of its executive council, demanding "reopening of the campus".
The office bearers of the ABVP and the DUSU also registered their protest in a unique manner, handing over roses to the members of the executive council, the highest decision-making committee of the university.
"We had been agitating for reopening since a long time. Today, the executive council was to meet, and we decided to present its members with roses before the meeting convened, in order to draw their attention to the problems of the students.
We want the executive council to work on all of the demands and give relief soon," said a statement quoting Sidharth Yadav, state secretary of ABVP.
Given that Class 12 results this year witnessed a large number of students scoring good marks, the ABVP has demanded an increase in seats by "10 per cent" across all courses, he noted.
The other demands of the students body included issues like "declaring sports quota seats in all colleges, granting additional time to undergraduate and postgraduate course aspirants for their applications, reopening all hostels with immediate effect and correcting irregularities in PHD seats".
Before the second wave of the pandemic set in and prompted DU to suspend all offline activities, the university had allowed final-year students to access labs while it was conducting theory classes online.
Meanwhile, the Left-affiliated All India Students' Association staged a protest on the Delhi University premises on Tuesday, demanding a planned reopening of the campus.
The protesters claimed that they were violently attacked by police and then detained.
"The DU VC has yet again refused to listen to the voice of the students. While a majority of DU is being pushed out of education, the police is violently pushing out protesters from campus democratic spaces. AISA shall continue their state wide campaign, #GiveOurCampusBack and continue raising voice for reopening of campuses," they said in a statement.
According to a senior police officer, around 20 to 25 people had come to protest and some of them were detained.
A case under section 188 of the IPC was registered for allegedly violating DDMA guidelines, the officer said, adding that they were released later.