Strike intensifies at SVPISTM

Students of Sardar Vallabhai Patel International School of Textiles & Management (SVPISTM) in Coimbatore, who refrained from classes last week demanding better amenities, were today not allowed inside the campus.

It is learnt that the management of the institute had asked the students to return after the weekend with their parents for a discussion on the issues raised by them.

“But when we entered the campus this morning, the Director asked us – both students (numbering around 60) and a couple of parents who had accompanied their wards to wait outside, refusing to initiate talks without the Dean. We have been waiting outside since morning. If nothing happens within the next two – three hours, we will take to the street,” a second-year student, preferring anonymity told this correspondent.

There is a situation of uneasy calm around the campus.

This incidentally is not the first time that the students have taken to agitation, demanding among others the need for recognition of courses by the All-India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), which is the statutory body that accredits post-graduate and graduate programmes.

While the number of student enrolment for the PG programme has taken a hit, students say that there were no takers for the UG courses in the current academic year.

SVPISTM has been established by the Union Ministry of Textiles

Alleging the management of luring them to join the programme offered by the institute, students said that when they appeared for the SVPMAT 2015, they were told that they would be eligible for scholarship of up to Rs 40,000. “Now they say “I did not say it. Clarify it with the Professor,” and each one will direct us to the other. We are clueless as our second term fees is due and there is lack of teaching staff. We have only 3 faculties for 8 subjects,” the student said.