GUWAHATI: Students of Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) here have sent a letter to the North East Students Organisation (NESO), seeking support towards the ongoing agitation against the discontinuation of benefits under the GoI-PMS (Government of India-Post Matric Scholarship) scheme.
The protest by the GoI-PMS Students’ Association at TISS entered the third day on Saturday even as one round of discussion with the institute’s administration reportedly did not yield any result.
The students are demanding complete fee waiver for SC, ST and OBC (GoI-PMS) students, implementation of National Commission for Schedule Tribe recommendations and a mechanism for affordable education.
“We have written a letter to NESO today seeking support and solidarity for our agitation. We will be meeting representatives of the organisation during which we plan to request them to take the matter with the state governments of the north-eastern states,” Manta Wangsu, member of the association, told The Shillong Times on Saturday.
As many as 62 students under the association, belonging to underprivileged families (including ST/SC/OBC) with an annual income less than Rs 2lakh, are enrolled in the 2018-19 academic session.
“Today, the protest took places across all the three TISS hostels here. Many students also did not take part in the sports meet today. Now, we plan to hit the streets if needed, with a hunger strike being the last resort if there is no positive response from the institute administration,” Wangsu said.
The institute administration had on Thursday informed this correspondent that steps have been initiated to enhance the student aid fellowship for non ST/SC students by about 70 per cent to extend the benefits to GoI-PMS students. “The scheme rollback is entirely a policy decision of the government,” Kalpana Sarathy, deputy director (acting), TISS Guwahati, had said.
There are 262 students enrolled across streams in the current session at TISS Guwahati, which has a mandate of 66 per cent seat reservation for students of the eight North Eastern states.
