Students of Allahabad University, protesting against fee hike, burnt effigies of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan on Wednesday on the occasion of Dussehra.
A group of students is protesting against the alleged nearly 400-fold fee hike for undergraduate courses in Allahabad University.
Students union vice-president Akhilesh Yadav told reporters that they burnt effigies of Modi, Pradhan and Vice Chancellor Sangeeta Srivastava in protest against Vijayadashami. He also called them “arrogant”.
Yadav said they had been sitting on a hunger strike for 30 days but no heed was paid to them. Manish Kumar, secretary of the All India Students’ Association’s Allahabad University unit, said, “We burnt the effigy of the prime minister, education minister and the vice-chancellor against the way the fees have been increased.”
However, due to Dussehra being a holiday, there were no students in the campus other than the agitators. On Tuesday, the protesting students threatened to intensify the agitation if talks with the university administration failed.
The meeting between the university administration and the students’ union over the fee hike, which lasted for about two-and-a-half hours, was a “complete failure”, Yadav had said after the talks.
