Students protest, term poor infrastructure at Andhra University; VC provides “phased fixes”

Students on Wednesday protested against water seepage and other infrastructural issues in hostels, poor street lighting and damaged internal roads at Andhra University in Visakhapatnam. | Photo credit: V. RAJU

Andhra University (AU) students, led by the Students Federation of India (SFI), on Wednesday staged a protest over the lingering infrastructure problems in the hostels and campus roads. On the same day, Vice Chancellor GP Raja Sekhar met the delegation at the administration building and outlined a phased plan for repairs and modernization.

According to Tarun, vice president of SFI at AU, heavy rain in the past few days has caused water seepage and plaster falling from the ceiling in 18 to 20 rooms on the second floor of the Satavahana hostel, which houses Arts College students. “Students could not sleep peacefully in their rooms because they did not know when the next plaster would fall,” he said. He also questioned the university’s practice of collecting a hostel development fee of ₹5,500 per year from students, alleging that about ₹3,200 of it was diverted to pay daily wage workers, a cost he said the university should bear on its own. “This development fund has not brought any development that we can see,” he added.

G. Ajay, District Secretary, SFÚ, Visakhapatnam, alleged that toilets in several hostels and departments, including the chemistry department, remained unusable despite repeated representations to the secretary. He said poor street lighting on several campus roads posed a safety hazard, especially to female students walking between the dormitories and the library at night.

Pragathi, a quantum engineering student, said Maharani Peta, Nagarjuna and Vidya Tarangini women’s hostels face similar hygiene and food quality issues, with inadequate and unsanitary toilets and food often served stale.

Responding to the complaints, Mr. Raja Sekhar said the university was carrying out the upgrading of hostels, canteens and toilets “in phases” and that the affected students of the Satavahana hostel had already been shifted to rooms on the lower floors, with repairs scheduled to begin during the Dasara holidays. Work is underway to electrify the campus to address lighting issues, he said, while internal road repairs, delayed in part due to a lack of raw materials and in some cases the need to re-tender, will begin this week.

Referring to the approval given at the board meeting held on Tuesday, the vice-chancellor said the university would build separate hostels for men and women with a capacity of 1,100 and 900, respectively, along with a “mega mess”.

Published – 24 Sep 2026 23:34 IST