The residents of Presidency University’s girls’ hostel at Salt Lake, who had been demanding the resumption of the bus service to and from their hostel, withdrew their protest on Monday after the authorities agreed to resume the service.
The students were staging a sit-in since Thursday on the college campus to protest the authorities’ decision to scrap the bus service which would ferry them to and from the hostel located at Salt Lake’s BF Block, around 9km from the College Street campus.
The university decided that two buses would be available from April and each student has to pay Rs 800 a month. The hostel has 180 students.
The students withdrew the protest after a meeting with the dean of students, the finance officer and some teachers of the university on Monday.
Earlier in the day, the university had proposed that the bus service could be resumed if the students were ready to pay Rs 1,000 per month.
Several private bus operators were called to discuss the rates.
A Presidency official said the total cost of running two buses would be around Rs 1.80 lakh a month.
“We will be able to collect of Rs 1.44 lakh a month with the amount that the students will pay (Rs 800). We have to subsidise the remaining amount,” the official said.
Initially, the talks had failed as the students were not ready to pay anything beyond Rs 500 a month.
“If these students paid Rs 500 a month, the collections would have come to Rs 90,000. This means the university had to pay the remaining amount (Rs 90,000) from its corpus. The university cannot afford this,” said a teacher.
Before the pandemic set in, two buses, provided by the Calcutta State Transport Corporation, used to ferry students to and from the hostel.
The students used to pay then Rs 400 a month.
Although the campus reopened for physical classes in February 2022, the bus service was not resumed.
Since the reopening of the campus, the residents of the hostel have staged several rounds of protests demanding the bus service.
Suswati Jana, one of the protesting students, said: “It has been decided that we will pay Rs 800 a month for the first three months, starting from April. Then they (the authorities) will float tenders to pick the service providers through bidding. Then the charge, is expected to come down further.”
Calls to the dean of students, Arun Maity, failed to elicit any response.