Patna students protest move to block college entrance

Thousands of students of Magadh Mahila College - a prestigious city women's college - took to the streets in the Bihar capital Monday to protest a government move to block the main entrance of their college to facilitate the construction of a convention center. Police said about 5,000 girls marched from the college to Gandhi Maidan near the state assembly, a distance of about four km.

The students shouted slogans and held up placards protesting the government decision to block the main college entrance for the sake of a convention center nearby, proposed to be built at a cost of Rs.274.2 crore. Traffic in the heart of the city was disrupted at some places by the slogan-shouting students. The residences of the superintendent of police and the district judge are being demolished to make space for the convention center.

Students protest against convention center

"We are protesting to express our anger and unhappiness over the government decision to block the main entrance of our college for the sake of the proposed convention centre. We will not allow this to happen," Shweta Kumari, one of the protestors, said. The Patna University Students' Union is supporting this protest. No political party has so far come forward in support of the students. The secretary of the building construction department of the state government, Chanchal Kumar, said the entrance would not be a problem at all.

"Only change needed would be to make that stretch of the convention centre L-shaped instead of I-shaped," he said. The government plans to build an international convention centre able to accommodate 5,000 people at a time with the parking lot attached to it having a capacity of 500 vehicles.

IANS