New Delhi, Sep 7 (PTI) RJD Rajya Sabha MP and Delhi University professor Manoj Jha on Monday wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeking his “urgent intervention” following the Satya Niketan building collapse tragedy, saying it has exposed a “grave crisis” of student accommodation at the university.
He urged the Centre to announce an emergency, ring-fenced financial allocation for construction of public hostels for Delhi University students.
The death toll in the September 6 collapse of the multi-storeyed building near Delhi University’s South Campus has risen to seven, while rescue agencies have taken out 12 people from the debris.
Jha said he was writing with “profound anguish”, noting that reports of structural violations, accumulated water and construction or repair work being undertaken in an ageing building raised “disturbing questions about regulatory oversight”.
“The tragedy demands an impartial investigation, but it also requires us to confront the larger institutional failure that placed these students in such a building in the first place,” he said.
He said the fact that the collapsed structure was not an official Delhi University hostel did not diminish the responsibility of the university or the government.
“On the contrary, it reveals the scale of their failure. Because the University cannot provide accommodation to more than a small proportion of its students, thousands of young people are compelled to enter an unregulated and predatory rental market in neighbourhoods surrounding its campuses and colleges,” Jha said.
“They pay exorbitant rents for cramped rooms in buildings whose structural safety, fire preparedness, sanitation and legal status they are rarely in a position to verify,” he said.
Jha said students coming to Delhi to pursue higher education had demonstrated the will and ability to do so and many were the first members of their families to attend university.
“Their parents make extraordinary sacrifices, drawing upon small savings, taking loans, selling assets and cutting back on essential household expenditure — all in the hope that education will give their children a more secure and dignified future,” he said.
“This aspiration has become an opportunity for unchecked rentier extraction. Landlords and private operators profit from an acute shortage created by public underinvestment, while students and their families bear all the costs and risks,” Jha said.
The RJD MP urged the Centre to take urgent steps to build public hostels for Delhi University students.
“I therefore urge the Union Government to announce an emergency, ring-fenced financial allocation for the construction of public hostels for students of the University of Delhi,” he said.
“Public land available with the Union Government, the University and its agencies should be identified for hostel construction, with transparent deadlines and publicly accessible progress reports,” he said.
He also sought specific provisions for women, students from Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Other Backward Classes, persons with disabilities, and students from economically vulnerable families and distant regions.
Jha said the Satya Niketan tragedy should also be viewed within the “wider collapse of civic and public infrastructure” in Delhi and across the country.
“Roads cave in, bridges and buildings collapse, drains fail, public institutions deteriorate, and unauthorised structures proliferate despite the existence of multiple regulatory bodies,” he said.
“Their recurrence of these ‘mishaps’ points to widespread corruption, collusion, negligent inspection and the hollowing out of public accountability,” Jha said.
He urged Modi to treat the incident as a national warning.
“India cannot celebrate the expansion of higher education while abandoning students once they reach the cities in which its universities are located,” he said. “I request you to treat the Satya Niketan collapse as a national warning and to intervene urgently.” Jha said the most appropriate response to those who lost their lives would be a binding commitment to student safety.
“The most fitting response to the young lives lost would be a binding public commitment that no student coming to Delhi in pursuit of education will again be forced, for want of a university hostel, to entrust their life to an unsafe and illegally altered building,” he said.
The five-storey building, which housed a boys’ PG accommodation, collapsed around 1.30 pm on Sunday while repair work was underway.
The NDRF said on Monday that its teams were using cutters, hydraulic jacks and canine teams to search for signs of life and that the rescue operation was expected to continue through the day. PTI AO RT RT
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