Overview
- Students of the East Hostel say two rooms were found locked after Friendship Day on Aug. 1 and began an indefinite hunger strike late that week demanding the removal of deputy warden Rabi‑ul Ansari for alleged harassment.
- Hundreds of students have been protesting on campus with placards and gongs and the hostel mess has remained shut during the agitation.
- BJP MLA and university senate member Prakash Chandra Sethi attended a campus meeting to help resolve the unrest and then wrote to Assembly Speaker Surama Padhy alleging chief warden Sudarshan Mishra showed ‘gross misconduct’ during the meeting.
- In response to the MLA’s complaint, wardens of the hostels relinquished administrative duties, staged a campus march, and submitted a memorandum asking the vice‑chancellor to secure an apology from the MLA; the university teachers’ association backed the wardens.
- The vice‑chancellor has appealed for calm, said he will not accept the wardens’ resignations and promised a resolution, while the dispute has widened the issue from a hostel discipline case to a test of campus governance and outside political involvement.