OU Campus Heats up with Protests Over Lack of Water and Power in Hostels
Hyderabad: The Osmania University chief warden of hostels on Monday said that summer vacations would begin from May 1, and asked students to cooperate as there was a severe shortage of water and electricity.
This angered students, and invited swift rebuttals from the university administration, electricity officials and the government, which said the hostels would not be closed.
Almost immediately after the chief warden issued the notice, students marched to the varsity’s administrative building and demanded that the officials explain how the university could declare holidays and close hostels.
In an X post, former chief minister K. Chandrashekar Rao tweeted: “Telangana CM and Dy CM were misleading the people on power, irrigation and drinking water supply in the state for the past 4 months. Osmania University Chief Warden confirms that all their claims were farce (sic).”
Southern power discom officials sent a letter to OU Vice Chancellor Prof. D. Ravinder, stating that the chief warden’s notice about shortage of power supply was an attempt to misguide students and the general public.
“There is no shortfall of electricity, even in this summer. We are supplying 24x7 without any interruption of supply by our company”, the letter said. The TSSPDCL superintendent engineer, Secunderabad, said the campus was receiving continuous power supply from two dedicated 11KV feeders from the 33/11 KV Osmania University substation, and it has been verified by the readings recorded in the metres of the substation transformers.
In a quick action, Registrar Prof. P. Laxminarayana issued a show-cause notice to the chief warden, asking him to provide a detailed clarification regarding the issuance of the circular. HMWS&SB officials inspected the water tankers and storage capacities and said that the Water Board was supplying more water than what the university needs.
“We are required to supply 505 kilolitres of water to the varsity every day but we are providing 1,271 kilolitres”, officials said.
Deputy Chief Minister Mallu Bhatti Vikramarka said that the chief warden sent the notice without checking the facts. He said that students need not vacate hostels.
