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The Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) Students' Union launched a strike across all campuses of the institute on Thursday, 22 February, against the administration demanding tuition, dining hall, and hostel fees from scholarship students.
TISS Students’ Union gave a call for the strike following the recent notification of the varsity to withdraw financial aid to GOI-PMS students from SC/ST category across all its campuses. Financial aid had already been withdrawn for OBC students in 2015.
Along with this, TISS has been constantly hiking fees, due to which many students have been forced to drop out or never apply to the institute. The union claimed that students studying at TISS under scholarship are exempted from paying such fees.
The TISS has campuses in Mumbai, Tuljapur, Hyderabad, and Guwahati.
All talks and mediation with the administration over the past many months have failed. The students’ union of TISS calls for a university strike across TISS campuses on 21 February. We call for boycotting all classes, field work and submissions.Archana Soreng, TISS Students’ Union president, to PTI
The Centre's Post Matric Scholarship (GOI-PMS) issue stands unresolved since the institute had notified its withdrawal from all forms of financial aid to students, she claimed.
According to The Indian Express, on 26 May last year, TISS issued a circular stating that all ST, SC and OBC students under the Government of India Pre-matric Scholarship scheme would have to pay their full fee, which would be reimbursed as and when the college receives funds released by the government .
"Now students, both current and newcomers, will have to pay their full fees even as they wait for their state scholarship amount to come," Soreng said.
The association has also demanded a notification from the institute about ways in which financial assistance for the PMS students of the upcoming batch of 2018-2020 will be provided.
Explaining the issue, she said that the institute without mentioning anything in the prospectus, was now demanding tuition, dining hall (DH) and hostel fee from scholarship students of the 2016-18 batch.
"The administration has also said that the 2017-2019 batch will have to pay the full fee for DH and hostel as the notification was out in May 2017 before they took admission and they were very well aware about the notification.
"But the argument cannot be bought as the notification was released in May 2017 in between the admission process, not before the admission process was initiated," she said.
(With inputs from PTI and The Indian Express)
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