By Our Correspondent
BHUBANESWAR:The State Higher Education Department has issued a notice to implement an undemocratic code of conduct in all colleges and universities of the state, which is extremely anti-student-teacher interest and requires permission from the authorities to hold any meeting, committee, gathering, agitation or strike within the campus.
AIDSO has strongly opposed this extremely undemocratic decision of the state government and has organized student agitations in various educational institutions. The organization’s Odisha State Council President Somnath Behera and Editor Siddhartha Rath have strongly demanded through a press release to immediately withdraw this code of conduct and to protect the democratic and educational atmosphere in educational institutions and to announce the date for direct student parliament elections.
It is worth mentioning here that after the state BJP government came to power, the state’s higher education system has been pushed into an even more dire situation. The National Education Policy-2020, which is against education and civilization, has been implemented. As a result, there has been widespread irregularities in everything from teaching to examinations and publication of results.
Thousands of professors, lecturers and teaching staff positions have fallen vacant. On the other hand, students have to face various problems like fee hike, conversion of various general courses into self-financing, shortage of hostels, irregularities in libraries and laboratories, reduction in grants for research. The education system in the state is on the verge of a complete shutdown. Therefore, against all these problems, students are organizing student movements as their democratic right. To destroy this movement in its tracks, on the one hand, the state BJP government has stopped the student parliament elections and on the other hand, it has imposed a very undemocratic code of conduct similar to the Hitler regime.
It is worth mentioning here that protesting, fostering dissent, forming organizations etc. are the basic democratic rights of every citizen and the countrymen have earned this right by making many sacrifices and fighting bloody battles against the British for two hundred years. But the state government is very unfairly imposing this code to establish its own anti-civilizational reactionary politics by taking complete control of the educational institutions within its campuses.
That is, it is trying to throw the students into the same old medieval ignorance, blindness, prejudice, communalism. Therefore, the organization has strongly demanded that the government immediately withdraw this very anti-civilizational code of conduct. Otherwise, the organization has warned that the movement will be intensified by involving students, teachers, intellectuals, and democracy-loving people across the state in this movement.
