Students block the Cooch Behar bypass on Wednesday. Picture by Main Uddin Chisti

Cooch Behar, March 12: Around 700 second-year students of Dinhata College have not been able to fill up their examination forms because of political and administrative turmoil in the institution.

The last date for submission of forms was March 6 and a request for an extension of the deadline fell through in the absence of the principal, who is on leave, and the non-teaching employees, who are staying away from work.

Today, the students blocked the Cooch Behar bypass for over two hours, demanding a solution to their problem.

The protesters alleged that trouble began when the authorities delayed the elections to the college union, due since December. In the last elections, the Chhatra Bloc-Trinamul Chhatra Parishad-DSO combine had defeated the SFI.

“The CPM-dominated governing body has been deliberately delaying the elections, especially after the February 5 police firing on Forward Bloc demonstrators, which swung public opinion against the CPM,” said Hirakjyoti Barman, the general secretary of the college union. Barman is a member of the Bloc’s student wing, the Chhatra Bloc.

Five Bloc supporters were killed on February 5.

The students protested against the delay by locking up the principal’s office and staff rooms on February 28. They also gheraoed the principal, Ashis Sarkar, on March 4. Sarkar went on a two-month leave on that day. The non-teaching workers, citing security concerns, have not been coming to work since March 6.

In their absence, a request for an extension of the last date for submission of forms could not be pushed through. Around 75 per cent of the second-year students had not yet filled up their forms.

Cooch Behar district magistrate Rajesh Kumar Sinha said the NBU inspector of colleges will come to Dinhata tomorrow.