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Occupy UGC students to protest Kolkata lathicharge on students

The protest, that started with a call from the Jawaharlal Nehru University Students Union (JNUSU), will now be led by a core committee comprising students from central universities in Delhi such as JNU, Delhi University, Jamia Millia Islamia.

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Days into their protest student groups, who are part of the Occupy UGC movement, took out a resolution to spread their call to the rest of the country. They also declared a march, starting from the office of the University Grants Commission to the ministry of human resource and development, on November 5. On Tuesday, students protesting in front of the UGC office in New Delhi burnt effigies of HRD minister Smriti Irani and West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee for a police lathicharge on student groups, protesting in Kolkata on Monday.

Only last week, protesters in Delhi were also lathicharged by the Delhi police deployed there for trying to push back barricades.

The protest, that started with a call from the Jawaharlal Nehru University Students Union (JNUSU), will now be led by a core committee comprising students from central universities in Delhi such as JNU, Delhi University, Jamia Millia Islamia.

The protest began when the University Grants Commission decided to roll back non-NET scholarships, which most research students heavily depend on. It has now taken on the cause of not only keeping the scholarships intact but also increasing their amount and extending them to state universities. Though the MHRD has stopped the UGC from rolling back scholarships students are demanding that the amounts be increased.

According to one of the protestors, Pondicherry University, Madras University, Jadavpur University among a few others have been responding to their cry for a nationwide students' movement.

The protests in front on the UGC office are heavily surrounded by deployed police and Rapid Action Force personnel have seen students camping out through nights on end as they demand that UGC scrap the review committee that will decide on the fate of scholarships and bring in an enhancement committee to increase the scope of scholarships.

Apart from sloganeering and chanting, student groups have been trying to be as creative as possible in their protests, with a bunch of them singing parody versions of popular Bollywood songs to criticise the UGC. When a bunch of them burst into "O Zulamiya", riffing off "O Womaniya", even the police personnel found it difficult to not laugh and cheer.

Angry over various government-imposed measures, the UGC protest is the latest in a series of students' protests across the country. Pondicherry University students raised their voices for long against their allegedly corrupt vice-chancellor, and only recently did the Film and Television Institute of India call off its 140-day-long strike against right-wing government appointees in the FTII society and the Delhi College of Art went on strike for a month in September, demanding a modern syllabus, better infrastructure that includes functional toilets for students.

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