TU-IOE padlocked continues

Twenty-one student unions aligned to various political parties today padlocked engineering campuses under the Institute of Engineering to exert pressure on Tribhuvan University and the Ministry of Education to fulfill their three-point demand. Jagrit Rayamajhi, Vice-president, UCPN-Maoist-aligned All Nepal National Independent Students Union- Revolutionary, said that they were forced to padlock the colleges after the concerned authorities failed to address their demand of probe into irregularities in the results of entrance examinations of BE and BArch conducted by the IoE. There are altogether four constituent and 10 affiliated campuses under the IoE across the country. The agitating students’ meeting held yesterday had decided to ask Tribhuvan University and the Ministry of Education to suspend the officials of IoE and the examination board for irregularities in IoE entrance examination results. They have called on the authorities to conduct a fair investigation into the case. They have also demanded a high level probe committee comprising experts to investigate into the IoE case. Any student who wishes to pursue BE and BArch in TU affiliated colleges in Nepal must clear entrance exams conducted by IoE. The entrance examination results of BE and BArch were first published on August 20. On August 22, IoE cancelled the results citing technical errors and republished the results on August 24 with changes. This is the first time that the IoE re-published entrance exam results. Student unions have been alleging that IoE officials, guided by vested interest, had cancelled previous results and published new ones. Nepal Students Union aligned to the Nepali Congress, All Nepal National Free Students Union aligned to the CPN-UML and All Nepal National Independent Students Union-Revolutionary aligned to the UCPN-M are some of the student unions among 21 student unions that are up in arms. They have also demanded postponement of admissions in various colleges until the probe committee comes up with its report. They have also demanded that the entrance exam be rescheduled in such a way that students waiting for Grade XII results could take the test.