Delhi to get three new hostels for students from Northeast

New Delhi: Three new hostels for students from the Northeast will be constructed in Delhi, including one exclusively for those studying in the Jawaharlal Nehru University.

Union Minister Jitendra Singh informed this during his visit to the JNU campus on Monday. The new hostel in the university is expected to be ready by 2017 and is one of the three accommodations being planned for the students from the Northeast in the capital and planned by the Union Ministry of Development of North Eastern Region (DoNER), he said.

While the work on the construction of JNU hostel is expected to begin shortly, there is also a proposal for two other hostels in Delhi University campus of Ramanujan College and possibly within Hindu College premises, he said.

However, he said that an alternative proposal recently sent to Vice-Chancellor of Delhi University which states that instead of constructing hostels at different sites like Ramanujan College or Hindu College, a common piece of land can be acquired at a location convenient to all and a large hostel complex can be developed there.

The DoNER minister said that the existing Northeast Working Women's Hostel at Jasola near Apollo Hospital is also being upgraded with the inclusion of more modern amenities. Singh said JNU has a huge strength of students from Northeast and the number of students staying over here from each of Northeastern states is higher than the number of students from several other states.

The Northeast Study Center in JNU is also being advised to enlarge the spectrum of scholars and faculty persons associated with it in order to seek a healthy balance among all schools of thought.

The DoNER Minister was informed that most of the formalities and paper-work with regard to the hostel project in JNU Campus are nearly complete and the construction work will start very soon.

At the same time, there is an unusual enthusiasm about this project not only among the students from Northeast in the campus, but also among the students of the other parts of the country, he was told. Singh appreciated the active cooperation lent by Prof Sudhir Kumar Sopory during his tenure as Vice-Chancellor and hoped that similar coordination between the JNU authorities and DoNER Ministry will continue in future.