Siliguri, July 29: Students of Siliguri College of Commerce have decided to call off the indefinite strike, which was on since July 24, from tomorrow.

The students had struck after college authorities decided to restrict admission to only 600 seats.

Student leaders said the strike was being withdrawn to give the college authorities, who have refused to budge from their stand, another chance to revoke their decision and admit more students.

Sanjay Prasad, the general secretary of Siliguri College of Commerce students’ union, said: “We will withdraw the strike from tomorrow. One of the reasons for calling off the strike is that it is delaying the admission process and we feel that is not right.”

“The college authorities have assured us that they will take care of our problems. Our job now is to wait and watch. If the situation does not improve during the admission process, we will launch a fresh agitation,” he added.

According to principal of the college Shankar Chakraborty, the college was only following the guidelines formulated by the North Bengal University.

“The university has specified that we cannot admit more than 600 students. Last year, NBU had compromised on the figure and allowed us to admit 817 students after a lot of deliberation. This time, however, the university has issued strict instructions that we should not admit students beyond the permissible number. We have no other option but to adhere to the guidelines.”

“The decision to restrict the number of students to 150 per class has been taken to maintain quality in higher education. If any college wants to increase the number of students, it has to add classrooms and appoint more teachers,” said NBU vice-chancellor Pijush Kanti Saha.

Admissions to the college, supposed to start from July 24, had to be postponed because of the strike.

The college admission committee is likely to meet tomorrow to finalise when to begin the admission process.

Sources said admission forms would be distributed from Thursday.

Siliguri College of Commerce does not have a building of its own despite being one of the oldest colleges in the subdivision.

Classes are held during the evenings at a rented building.

Construction of new classrooms and appointing more teachers might not be possible immediately, said sources.

They added that a plan was being chalked out to develop the infrastructure of the college.

Siliguri Town Chhatra Parishad has submitted a memorandum to subdivisional officer Gopal Lama, seeking his intervention in the matter.