Hyderabad: Andhra Pradesh students in Manipur clueless on government help
Minister Botcha Satyanarayana and State Assembly Deputy Speaker K Veerabhadra Swamy speaking to the media in Vizianagaram on Sunday
Hyderabad/ Vijayawada : While Telangana students are likely to reach Hyderabad by Monday morning, students from Andhra Pradesh are most worried as they have no official information from any source not even the so-called helpline which the state government claims to have set up.
Nandita (name changed) is one among 20 students from Andhra Pra-desh who is studying at the Central Agriculture University, told Hans India that the AP government was not reaching out to them. She said that students of West Bengal, Assam, Meghalaya and Odisha have been evacuated following proactive measures by the respective gov-ernments but AP was only making claims but no help was coming forth.
For the first two days, the situation was scary as students staying on the campus could listen to the gun shots due to the ruckus going out-side. However, it has a bit subsided from Sunday morning. Expressing the desperation of the students from Andhra Pradesh, she said, “Our parents have been saying that the government has estab-lished helplines and making preparation to bring us back to the state. But all our efforts to contact helpline since Sunday morning but no one was responding. “We do not know what is happening?” she rued.
Another student, Tejaswini (name changed) from Telangana said that they were informed to be ready by 5 am on Monday to be airlifted by Telangana government. She said they suffered a lot during last four days. Only now they were getting proper food for the last two days.
Nandita said that the situation of Telugu students studying at the Na-tional Institute of Technology (NIT), Imphal was fast deteriorating. They get only single meal a day. The situation of the students at the Regional Institute of Medical Sciences (RIMS) is still unknown, she adds. In all, there are about 250 Telugu students studying in CAU, NIT and RIMS,” they said.
Students from NIT, IIT have also alleged lack of proper response from AP officials. In-charge hostel warden Haldar of CAU said, “We have re-ceived information from Telangana government planning to evacuate their students.
Another student said that local police was posted there and they fear what would happen if a violent mob attacked the college and the hos-tel. Ration is also running out and there are no supplies from outside.
Meanwhile, AP Education Minister Botcha Satyanarayana told the media that the state government announced that it had identified 157 AP students stranded in Manipur and efforts are on to bring them back safe.