SRI NAGAR: The National Institute of Technology (NIT) Srinagar, which was shut on Friday “indefinitely” after clashes between local and non-local students over India’s defeat in the the WT20 semi-finals, will reopen on Monday. Authorities have formed a fact-finding team to probe the incident and punish the guilty.
“The NIT’s closure order issued yesterday (Friday) has been withdrawn. The routine classwork and other academic activities will resume from Monday,” NIT Registrar F A Mir said.
He said that the hostel vacation order issued on Friday had been withdrawn with immediate effect in view of normalisation of the situation.
The authorities had decided to close the NIT Srinagar for an indefinite period after clashes had erupted between local and non-local students studying in the institute.
Tempers were running high after India’s defeat to West Indies in the semi-final of the World T20 on Thursday. After the match, local students celebrated the Windies win. The non-local students objected to this. A group of Kashmiri students studying in NIT said that tension was prevalent in the campus.
“When Pakistan loses a match, the non-Kashmiri students would come out and celebrate. When India lost the semi-final match to West Indies on Thursday, Kashmiri students celebrated Windies win,” they said.
They said this did not go down well with the non-local students, who are a majority at NIT. “They attacked local students, a research scholar and a delivery boy of Flipkart on the campus on Friday. They also hurled the abuses at them. They dragged the scholar, who also teaches at the institute,” the students said, alleging that they also forced them to chant slogans like Bharat Mata Ki Jai.
A non-local student, pleading anonymity, said both the groups were emotional. “The fresh batch of non-local students could not control their emotions and clashed with the locals after India’s defeat in World T20,” he said.