Project and PhD scholars at NIT Durgapur started returning to the campus on Friday following production of parents’ declaration about the health and recent community interaction of a scholar’s family.

The institute has decided to call the scholars back to the campus on the basis of the Centre’s Unlock-V guidelines which allow higher education institutions to reopen for research scholars and postgraduate students in technology and science streams who require laboratory/experimental work.

In the declaration form, a parent has to state whether anyone who lives at his or her address has returned from domestic or international travel within the last 14 days.

A parent has to declare whether anyone living at his or her address has been in physical contact with a person/persons diagnosed with Covid-19.

“Is any one who lives at your address currently under a form of self isolation as the result of an order of a government authority or as the result of a recommendation of a health professional?” reads a question in the declaration form.

“The parents will have to tick ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ against each question and declare that the information provided is a true and proper representation of the family’s health and recent community interaction and have no objection to send their wards back to the institute,” said an official.

The institute will be calling back 550 PhD scholars and 100-odd project scholars. “The scholars are coming according to the slots they are being allotted,” said NIT director Anupam Basu.

The institute has started bringing the 75 MTech final-year students back to the campus for lab-dependent hardware projects.

“We are planning staggered physical reopening across all the years. The fourth-year students will be asked to come from mid-March. The decision to call back research scholars and MTech students is a precursor to that,’’ said Basu.

NIT is planning to bring final-year BTech students of the eighth semester and those who are in the third year and second year to the campus so that they can do lab sessions to make up for the classes lost since March last year, when all campuses were shut down as a precaution against Covid-19.

“If your ward feels unwell with any symptoms of Coronavirus (COVID-19), however mild, you must keep them at home and get them tested,” the declaration form states.