As many as 5,000 students have been affected due to an "indefinite" shutdown of the Patan Campus by the college administration since June 27 after a bitter dispute between the campus chief, teachers and the student unions.

The master´s level students have not been able to collect their mark-sheets and character certificates whereas studies of hundreds of students who graduated to the Bachelor´s level third year have been hampered for over two months now, said Sushil Dhakal, a master´s level student of the college.

"BSc second year students appeared in the exams in July but their practical exams have yet to be conducted," said Dhakal.

The students have already submitted a memorandum to the Vice Chancellor of the Tribhuvan University to resolve the problem, but both the administration and teachers remain reluctant to sit for dialogue, he added.

The college offers bachelor´s and master´s degree courses on pure science, environment science, and arts and humanities. Likewise, four-year course of Bachelor of Computer Science and Information Technology has also been started from this year.

The student unions claim that the administration itself decided to close down the college to avoid rising criticism against the current campus chief Aman Shrestha.

"Shrestha issued a notice on June 27 which read that the college has been closed as the situation turned unfavourable for conducting academic and management activities," said Bhawindra Khatri, president of Free Student Union (FSU), at the college, adding, "The administration has not issued another notice after that."

The dispute had started when campus chief Shrestha, who was appointed on the recommendation of the UCPN (Maoist), in June allegedly allowed mass admissions by pro-Maoist student union but disallowed other student unions including pro-CPN-UML ANNFSU from doing the same. The student unions were competing to give admissions to their supporters in view of the elections to the Free Students Union, according to Khatri.

However, campus chief Shrestha has blamed non-cooperation by teachers for the closure. "The teachers who are eying my chair have created chaos in the college," he claimed.

"The teachers went on a pen down strike despite of my efforts to provide them salaries," he claimed.

President of Tribhuvan University Teachers´ Association (TUTA) Yogendra Narayan Badbadiya said that the campus chief should either resign or work to resolve the dispute. More than 350 teachers including 100 temporary teachers have not been paid since June.

source:republica,15 Sep 2013