The Maulana Abul Kalam Azad University of Technology, to which all government and private engineering colleges in Bengal are affiliated, has resumed its community kitchen to feed the poor and the destitute in Kalyani.

Headquartered in Nadia district’s Haringhata, the university is preparing meals for 350 people on the campus and distributing the food through the office of the sub-divisional officer.

Registrar Parthapratim Lahiri said the resumption of the community kitchen became inevitable as stricter restrictions that came into force on Sunday to arrest the rise of Covid-19 cases had robbed hundreds of people of their livelihood.

As part of the initiative, the kitchen of the girls’ hostel on the campus is being used as the community kitchen and it is being run by a dedicated team of employees.

“Since we have resources and the infrastructure, the community kitchen was revived on Thursday. Food packets containing soybeans, eggs, chicken, fish and khichdi are being distributed through the SDO’s office,” said Lahiri.

Last year, the community kitchen was run for about a month.

Unlike last year, the distribution of food packets has been left to the local administration.

An official of the university said that ever since the campus was shut as a precaution against Covid, the small eateries and shops around have all downed their shutters.

“These people are in distress. We hope that through the community kitchen we would be able to take care of some,” he said.

The university will start the fundraising drive to incur the cost.

“Initially we will use the university’s corpus to run the kitchen,” said an official.