Bhubaneswar: Students of the Department of Pharmacy of Utkal University held a sit-down strike in front of the Vice Chancellor’s Tuesday office to protest against the alleged neglect the department by not fulfilling the basic norms of All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE).
The AICTE has given a deadline till September 26 to the university administration to satisfy the basic norms else the degrees won’t be authorised by it.
Pharmacy, which is a self-financing course, has more than 300 students in eight batches but are allotted a single classroom and one seminar hall. Students have no other option but to study batch-wise every day. Most of the classes and exams also get cancelled because of the same problem.
Students from the department talking to Orissa Post, also
said there was hardly any book for the department in the library whereas the laboratory was
short of chemicals with most of them having expired.
Biswajit Rout, a student, said said, “this is the fourth time we are protesting here. Our career is at stake and we literally learn nothing here. Our degrees won’t have any value if not affiliated by AICTE”.
Vice Chancellor SM Patnaik said, “We will temporarily shift the students of Pharmacy Department to the sports block building and the construction of a new building will start soon”