Tirupati: Students flay deplorable conditions at Indian Culinary Institute

Tirupati: The students of Indian culinary institute (ICI), Tirupati, have lamented the sorry state of affairs in the campus.

They have written to the Vice-President of India who inaugurated the Institute five years back, Union Minister for Tourism and other officials exposing the lapses and negligent attitude of the administration.

Even after five years, the Institute is said to have only four teaching faculty and the students have no campus recruitment drives.

Some of the students revealed that the Institute has failed in improving the quality and standards of teaching and not producing quality students. The lack of monitoring from the tourism officials in New Delhi, or the mentor institute in Noida have led the things to go worse.

According to them the valuable infrastructure in the campus was not being used by the students. "The generators, guest elevator, service elevator, laundry rooms, butchery and many other labs were never opened for operation in the last three years. There are at least Rs 5 crore worth of machines that were not used even once," maintained the students.

They pointed out that the library has neither books nor papers and only empty racks can be seen. Similarly, except for tables and chairs, the computer lab was not having any computers. There was a vacant room in the name of museum and so too the gymnasium. The research and development lab was not seen opened in the past three years whereas the cuisine theatre was opened once in six months only to mop out the clogged water.

On the academic front, there are only four teaching faculty in the Institute. While subjects like food photography and molecular gastronomy need high standards to teach, those are being dealt by the faculty who don't have the requisite experience in the relevant field. Further, so far, no campus recruitments were held for the last three years. They even levelled allegations on the Principal saying that he hardly takes classes.

Responding to the grievances of the students, Principal M Tirulog Chander told The Hans India that for the past two years due to the pandemic the classes are being held online and there are only less number of students on the campus.

Even now, online classes are going on. Once the offline classes commence soon, every equipment has to be used. The elevators etc., cannot be kept opened when the students are not there as they are accident prone. He turned down the allegations saying that they have conducted several functions in the cuisine theatre and even the briefing sessions for students are being held there only. At least three English newspapers including The Hans India are coming to the library regularly.