Students Protest In DU's Hansraj College, Allege Cow Shelter Built Instead Of Girl's Hostel

Students of Hansraj College under the Delhi University have launched an online protest after the authorities allegedly set up a cow shelter inside the campus, at a location that was originally allocated for a girls' hostel, a report in TOI said.

The Swami Dayanand Saraswati Gau-Samwardhan ewam Anusandhan Kendra was set up inside the campus some two months ago.

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Currently, the cow centre is an enclosure located by the college gate for the men’s hostel. It has only one cow so far in the facility.

What the Principal said

“The location of the centre has nothing to do with the hostel land. This particular land was used to conduct RT-PCR tests during the second Covid-19 wave and it does not even have enough space to build a hostel,” college principal Rama Sharma was quoted as saying in The Times of India.

Shel said if the college wanted to set up a gaushala, it would have allocated a bigger land area for the purpose, and added that the centre had been built for research purposes to explore the possibilities of the college becoming “self-sufficient” in dairy products. “We follow Arya Samaj, and once a month, the college conducts havans, for which products like ghee and cow dung are required,” she said. Following DU’s decision to push innovation projects, the college is trying to see if it “can become self-sufficient”, she said.

Hansraj College

Students oppose

However, Students’ Federation of India (SFI) the students wing of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) said that the college administration is prioritising the “protection and promotion of cows” instead of woes faced by women students.

“SFI Hansraj unconditionally condemn and protest the construction of a GauShala…at the very site which was reserved for a women’s hostel whose construction has been on hold for many years now… We find it disgusting that our college administration prioritises the ‘protection and promotion’ of cows instead of struggling female students whose interests are being sidelined for such an absurd decision,” a statement by the SFI said.

BCCL

“We, the students of Hansraj, unconditionally condemn and protest the construction of a gaushala, dubbed as a Swami Dayanand Cow-Protection and Research Centre at the very site which was reserved for a women’s hostel whose construction has been on hold for many years now,” the online petition said.

Hansraj College is known as one of Delhi University’s premier institutions and is ranked 14 for colleges under the Government’s National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF).

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