Utkal university evicts unauthorized occupants from boys hostels in major raid

Bhubaneswar: Authorities of Utkal University on Monday with the help of city police conducted a raid in the institute’s boys hostels and evicted unauthorised occupants from the rooms.

Vice-chancellor Jagneshwar Dandapat guided the police team, which included special force personnel, as it entered the hostels around 10:30am to evict the outsiders, some of whom had already fled by locking their rooms as soon as they came to know of the raids.

Police broke open the doors, while university staff cleaned the rooms so that new students could stay there.University officials had identified around 170 outsiders who were staying illegally in the hostels.

Police’s main target was Hostel-3 as most of the unauthorised occupants were staying there.Official sources said there are seven boys’ hostels and seven girls’ hostels. “Out of these, non-students are staying in Hostels 1, 2, 3 and 5. The third hostel is the worst affected and university authorities were struggling to vacate unauthorised occupants from around 100 rooms until now,” a professor said.During the raid, materials, including clothes and personal belongings found inside the hostel rooms, were removed.

“Our regular students will stay in the hostels. We will deploy security staff to check the unauthorised stay of non-students on the premises. We have started this drive in four boys’ hostels,” Swati Mishra, registrar of the university, said.Kabir Mohan Sethy, the warden of hostels, said 19 rooms in Hostel 1 and 25 rooms in Hostel 2 have been vacated. A canteen at Hostel-1 was sealed too. “The third hostel is completely sealed.

After repair work is over in Hostel-3, rooms will be opened for allotment,” he added.Anup Kanungo, a senior police officer who was leading the police team, said seven platoons of police force were deployed on the campus for the special drive. “They assisted the university authorities in vacating the hostel rooms,” he added.“Many students are directly or indirectly connected with political parties and they use their connections to stay in the hostel rooms.

Even university authorities were finding it difficult to vacate their rooms fearing protests. Some of them were renting out their hostel rooms to outsiders. I hope this massive drive will stop these non-students from accessing these hostels,” a student said requesting anonymity.The drive continued in Hostel-1, 2 and 3 till evening on Monday. Most of the non-students were alumni of the university. A few of them were outsiders who never studied at the university, said the official sources.Later, the police team also raided Fakir Mohan Hostel (Number-3), which is also occupied by outsiders.