Siliguri, July 1: Sixteen dental students have threatened to go on an indefinite hunger strike if they are forced by the North Bengal Medical College and Hospital authorities to vacate the rooms occupied by them at the senior boys’ hostel.

With no infrastructure of their own, students of the North Bengal Dental College had been occupying nine rooms in the junior boys’ hostel and 16 rooms in the senior hostel of the NBMCH for the past 22 years on a “mutual understanding” between authorities of the two institutions. Both the institutions share the same premises.

In December last year, dental students vacated the nine rooms of the junior hostel in the NBMCH after they were allotted rooms on the ground and the first floors of the newly constructed hostel of the dental college.

On June 27, former NBMCH principal Tapas Bhattacharya asked the remaining 16 dental students to vacate the 16 rooms by July 11 as they would be required to accommodate 50 additional MBBS students who would be admitted this year.

“Since its inception in 1990, there has been a mutual understanding between the two institutions (with regard to sharing of hostel and infrastructure),” said Anindya Roy, president of the SFI-backed students’ union at the NBDC, who is among the 16 boarders asked to vacate.

“The construction of our own buildings began in 2008 but it has not been completed. The rooms on the second floor are under construction and would take four to five months more to be completed. If we are forced to vacate the rooms, we will go on an indefinite hunger strike,” added Roy.

Seventy dental students and junior doctors are currently occupying the 18 rooms of the newly constructed boys’ hostel. The NBDC has 112 students and junior doctors of whom 26 are girls.

“We had requested college authorities to discuss the issue with the NBMCH but they instead asked us to adjust in the existing rooms of the new hostel,” Abhishek Das, a fourth-year student, said.

Yesterday, the dental students staged a sit-in demonstration in front of Bhattacharya’s office for two hours demanding that he revoke the order. Bhattacharya has been transferred to Swastha Bhavan in Calcutta.

S.B. Mukherjee, the NBDC principal, said: “It is beyond our capacity to arrange private accommodation for the 16 students... We have no option but to accommodate them in our own hostel.”

Sabyasachi Das, dean of student affairs at the NBMCH, said the dental students would have to make room for the new MBBS students.

“The seat has been increased from 100 to 150 this year,” he said.