NE NEWS SERVICE
PUDUCHERRY, FEB 25
As a precautionary measure ahead of the visit of the Vice President M. Venkaiah Naidu on Wednesday, the police have shifted the protesting students from Administrative Block to silver jubilee block inside the campus on Tuesday.
Students have been protesting for the past 20 days, demanding total scrapping of the increase in fees. Security has been tightened in the university with the police and Rapid Action Force (RAF) personnel being deployed ahead of Naidu’s address the 28th convocation in the university on Wednesday, official sources said.
The university said the campus has been brought under tight security and as a preventive measure, the agitating students occupying the corridors of the administrative block have been removed but kept within the campus to maintain law and order, a release from the varsity said.
The university tried its best to avoid unforeseen developments by engaging four rounds of talks by its high-level committee with the protesting students but there was no breakthrough in the negotiations because of the ”adamant attitude” of the protesting students, the release added.
The varsity management claimed that efforts to end the impasse would continue, it said. The university had its earlier convocation in December last when President Ram Nath Kovind was the chief guest and the need to have convocation within two months of the earlier ceremony was to clear the backlog of degrees, the Vice-Chancellor of the University Gurmeet Singh said.
