The situation in Motihari Engineering College has reached to such a pass that 10 of its students have been on an indefinite fast for the third day on Thursday near Kargil Chowk pressing for the hostel facility on the college campus which is 14 kms from Motihari town where the students are forced to stay.

According to the agitating students the college authorities and the state science and technology department, which is running this college, failed to provide bus facilities to the students and they are forced to spend Rs 200 everyday to reach the college and return to the town.
Surya Prakash, one of the students on fast, told the media that the demand of the students for hostel and bus facilities has fallen on deaf ears of the college and science and college department authorities. One of fasting students has been hospitalized on the second day Wednesday.

Striking students are also demanding a high-level inquiry into irregularities in supplies and repair works at the college. They have also sought placement facilities for the students on completion of the engineering course as the first batch is about to pass out within a few months.

Meanwhile, the All Bihar Engineering Students’ Association, which is backing the fast, has charged that the students of three other engineering colleges of the state which came up in Chandi (in Nalanda district), Gaya and Darbhanga in the last five years have also been made to suffer for want of facilities as per the All India Council of Technical Education norms.

Association convener Prakash said that even laboratory works and practicals of engineering students were not done regularly despite the fact that lab work is an important part of the engineering courses. He added that the teaching standard in these government engineering colleges was also poor and needed to be improved.

The truth is that even old engineering colleges situated in Muzaffarpur and Bhagalpur are facing serious shortage of faculties and laboratories. Teachers of polytechnic colleges are taking classes in most of the engineering colleges in the state.

The Motihari Engineering College students agitation has come when the Nitish Kumar government has repeatedly been asking the Central University of Bihar to shift its campus from Patna to Motihari. The state government has refused to give land to the CUB in Patna or any place with better infrastructure facility. It is insisting that CUB be set up in Motihari. The Union HRD ministry and CUB officials are reluctant to accept land in Motihari as it lacks infrastructure facility there. They say that no faculty would go to work in such a far-flung flood-prone place. But the state government has repeatedly been stating that it would build roads and other infrastructure in Motihari once the CUB starts functioning there.

But CUB officials are now asking: how can the state government be trusted when it has failed to build hostels for its own engineering college there?

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