Posters, put up by a garment shop on St Xavier’s College campus, endorse uniforms on Tuesday. Picture by Hardeep Singh

Ranchi, June 28: Tank tops and cargo pants, your campus reign is under fashion police attack.

And it is not going to be an equal battle, as two of the capital’s most premier cradles — St Xavier’s College and Marwari College — have decided from July to impose uniforms on students, right from plus two onwards.

That sounds the death knell for the iconic jeans-clad college-goer. College fashions, one of the mainstays of youth culture, celebrated on campuses, fashion magazines, the ramp, and of course Bollywood, meet a quick end in the two autonomous institutions with uniform trousers-and-shirt for boys and salwar-kameez-dupatta sets for girls.

The duo, as well as Ranchi Women’s College and Doranda College, had already introduced uniforms for vocational studies courses since four years. But mainstream students flaunted their style at will. In fact, both St Xavier’s and Marwari College are trendsetters in the capital.

But college authorities have their own logic for the back-to-school-uniform manifesto. Kamal Bose, head of Hindi department, St Xavier’s College, said: “Uniforms give identity. Two, if one youngster wears flamboyant and costly clothes and another doesn’t, all sorts of bad feelings develop.”

Well, flattening style with a road roller also develops bad feelings. “I love wearing well-fitting jeans and sleeveless tops. Now, a uniform code will be followed. It’s not going well with us,” said a second-year Hindi honours student.

St Xavier’s College that reopens on July 1, will, in a show of democracy, ask students which colours they prefer among maroon, blue, sky blue and grey. “I don’t think anyone will object. We haven’t received complaints from students in various vocational courses,” said Father Nicholas Tete, principal.

He said college uniform gave “distinct identity” to students. “We are giving final shape to the idea. We are speaking to teachers and students and taking their views very seriously,” Tete pointed out.

Marwari College will start its uniform raj from July 17, with coffee-coloured trousers and white shirts for boys and white salwar kameez with coffee dupatta for girls at the intermediate level. Undergraduate boys get checked shirts and grey trousers and their female counterparts get grey salwar kameez sets with a checked dupatta. Commerce department reader, Marwari College for Boys, G.P. Trivedi said they introduced the uniform to avert an incident similar to the Khusboo Kumari murder on St Xavier’s campus on April 28 this year.

“We want all our students to wear college uniforms and carry an identity card to weed out unwanted people from our premises,” he said.

This gets a grudging thumbs up from GeNext. “Uniforms will make campuses safer,” said Rakesh Kumar, a second-year commerce student.