Varanasi: Liquor bottles found in hostel rooms of Banaras Hindu University

VARANASI: The massive drive launched against illegal occupants in hostels of the Banaras Hindu University has exposed how anti-social elements took advantage of Covid-19 pandemic to occupy hostel rooms and using them for their enjoyment by putting students on front.
In the Lal Bahadur Shastri hostel alone on the BHU campus, the university administration found that that out of 304 rooms as many as 130 were occupied illegally, said the BHU spokesman Rajesh Singh adding that of total illegally occupied rooms locks of 80 were broken in the presence of the hostel’s administrative warden Dr Anil Kumar Singh, proctorial board personnel and other officials on Monday and their allotment to eligible final year students of under graduate courses in faculty of arts.
During the drive empty liquor bottles, induction stoves and other articles were recovered, said the officials. It is the same hostel, which had remained in limelight for wrong reasons on several occasions in past. Such elements created law and order problems by indulging in fights with inmates of neighbouring hostels by putting the students on front.
In view of the same reasons, the BHU officials along with the district administration and police had finalized a strategy to ensure that no room is occupied by any unauthorized candidate before the allotment of berths to the eligible students for current session. According to the dean of students of BHU Prof MK Singh, the university has 72 hostels including 38 for boys and 34 for girl students with a total 14,540 berths— 9,084 for boys and 5,456 for the girls.
When the regular classes were suspended with the beginning of Covid-19 menace in 2020, the BHU officials said, except in some hostels for medical students no berths were allotted in other hostels as orders for vacating hostels for the safety of students had been issued. However, despite such orders for vacating hostel rooms a large number of berths in hostels on the campus remain occupied.
As per a rough estimate, around 600 unauthorised occupants were staying in around 15 hostels. As the university did not want to risk the lives of the students staying in hostels without allotment, no efforts were made to oust them during pandemic times, said the spokesman adding that many anti-social elements took advantage of the same and occupied the hostel rooms. After a strategy for getting hostels free of illegal occupants was made by the additional commissioner of police Subhash Dubey during a meeting with the dean of students, chief proctor, wardens of hostels and other varsity officials on September 1, the BHU officials started combing the hostels to detect how many rooms have been occupied illegally.
With the completion of this exercise the dean of faculty of arts prof Vijay Bahadur Singh initiated the drives after which administrative warden of LBS hostel kicked off the drive from Monday, said spokesman adding, after vacating 130 rooms of LBS hostel a similar drive will be carried out in Brijnath, Raja Ram Mohan Rai, Birla A, B and C hostels.