JOIN USJaw-dropping cut-offs is not the only problem that outstation students face at Delhi University. For them it gets tougher: they have to move to a new city and worry about their accommodation even before they get admission in a college.
Every year thousands of students pack their bags and come to the national capital as the admission season starts, hoping to secure a seat in one of the most prestigious universities in the country.
They come at the time of first cut-off list but not all are lucky to be selected in that. So they have to wait till their names appear in the consecutive lists or till the admission process gets over.
Sanjana Chettri from Sikkim wants to do Political Science at Lady Shri Ram College (LSR). She came to Delhi with her parents in the past week week but does not know when the family will be able to return to the home state.
“The cut-off lists didn’t have my name till now. We are waiting for another one now. My father has taken leave for coming to Delhi and has to resume work. But we have no clue how much more time it will take,” says Chettri.
Many parents who accompany their wards to Delhi have to worry about accommodation in the capital, which they say is costly, and about taking leave which they may be forced to extend till there is clarity on college admission.
Chettri, who is living at Sikkim House, has secured a seat in Delhi University (DU) through a quota for students from Sikkim but the two colleges she prefers don't have her name in the cut-off lists yet.
She says there has been a lot of running around since she landed in Delhi and the process is not as smooth as she thought it would be.
“We were told that the process is very simple but after coming here I realised it is very time consuming and hectic, especially in this temperature. I can control everything but how do I control the heat,” she adds.
However, the problems of students don’t end with securing a college seat. Once the admission is over, their hunt for accommodation begins and for some finding a place to live could get as difficult as meeting the cut-off criteria.
Just a tiny percentage of students manage to get on-campus hostel accommodation.
The university admits over 54,000 students every year for its undergraduate courses, a big chunk of them from other states. For an estimated 1.8 lakh students enrolled with the varsity at any one time, there are about 9,000 seats available at its hostels for both undergraduate and postgraduate students.
The university hostels admit students on the basis of merit. Also, students have to apply for hostels afresh each year irrespective of whether or not they secured a seat in the previous year. Due to this huge crunch, many students are forced to go for alternative accommodation, which means shelling out more money.
As per the Delhi Rent Control Act, 1995, house owners can increase rent by a maximum 10 per cent every 11 months. But students complain that no agreements are signed and rents are increased frequently.
Mehak, who hails from Ludhiana and is a third-year student of Journalism at LSR College, says she applied for the hostel in the first year, when she didn’t get it and stayed as a paying guest elsewhere. Next year, she did not apply at all.
“In the first year I was more inclined towards staying in the hostel because it was the first time I was staying away from my family, and hostel seemed like a safe option with your friends being around all the time. But the hostel has only three seats for Journalism students and I had to go with a PG,” she says.
Mehak looked for PG accommodation near her college which is located in south Delhi’s Lajpat Nagar area.
“The cost was high since it was south Delhi. I paid Rs 15,000 a month for a shared room and food for one year,” she says. Then the PG was closed down as the landlady was unwell and not able to maintain it.
She tried finding other accommodation near the college but all places were “very cramped and overpriced”.
“My parents got concerned about my health also as I had become weak and asked me to stay with my elder brother who has a flat in Gurgaon,” she says.
Mehak now commutes from Gurgaon to her college in south Delhi and her daily travel cost is around Rs 200.
With Delhi’s image as an unsafe city, parents are worried about safety and not all allow their daughters to stay in rented accommodation. Sometimes despite getting a good score, the students are forced to choose a college with a lower cut-off as it has hostel facility.
However, even those staying in the hostels have had bitter experiences about the facilities, the rules, and the food quality.
Students recently organised a campaign called ‘Pinjra Tod’ (break the cage) against the “sexist” hostel rules and even approached the Delhi Commission for Women on this.
A hosteller at LSR College says, “When we go for some competitions to other colleges, we are asked not to stay back late. But how is this possible? How can we come back before our turn comes?”
In April, hundreds of students from the Undergraduate Hostel for Girls (UGHG) at Dhaka Hostel Complex had protested over the acute water shortage going on for two months. The problem was only rectified after Delhi’s Water Minister Kapil Mishra intervened.