Students of seven colleges affiliated with Dhaka University (DU) on Tuesday took to the streets to press home their demands against the irregularities by the university authorities.
They blocked the Nilkhet-New Market intersection around 11:30am as a part of their demonstration.
The protesters, however, called off their demonstration for the day around 2pm and announced to resume until their demands were met.
New Market police station OC Md Atiqur Rahman said the students demonstrated in a peaceful manner. “The situation was under control.”
One of the protesters, BM Shahin, a fourth year student of accounting department at Dhaka College, said: “We will continue our protests until our demands are met by the DU authorities.
Protesting students of the 7 DU-affiliated colleges block the Nilkhet-New Market intersection to press home their demands on Tuesday, April 23, 2019 |Mehedi Hasan/Dhaka Tribune
“Until then all activities of these seven colleges will be put on hold. If necessary, we will bring Dhaka to a complete standstill.”
He added: “We will take to the streets again from 11am to 2pm on Wednesday and continue demonstrations regularly.”
The protesters also issued a statement regarding their five-point charter of demands, which were:
1. DU authorities must publish results within 90 days of an examination; and the results of all departments of a session must be published together
2. The exam papers of students under the degree, honours, and masters programs, of all the years, must be re-evaluated and the authorities concerned must mention the reasons behind the high fail rate
3. A separate building must be established to run the operations of the seven affiliated colleges
4. DU teachers must teach two classes in every department of all the colleges every month
5. An academic calendar with crash programs, to solve the session jam issue, must be introduced
Students said that they are demonstrating against the irregularities imposed by DU authorities.
