As Project Remained In Limbo, It Needs ‘Some Work’ To Revive: VC

Srinagar: The residential quarters for employees of the Kashmir University continues to be a distant dream as their construction remains unattended and abandoned for more than 25 years now.
The callous approach of the authorities toward the completion of these structures has been borne by over 100 employees of the university who require accommodation. There are more than 150 posts including professors and assistant professors advertised by the varsity and selection process is expected to be completed in the near future.
“All of them will also need accommodation and there is not enough of it,” the sources in the University told Kashmir Reader.
The work on these residential quarters, in Mirza Bagh here, was taken up in the early 1990s with an aim to accommodate all teaching and non-teaching staff members of the university.
“These were more than 100 sets of residential quarters and would have sufficed for now at least,” the sources said, adding, “However, twenty-five years later, the place lies in ruins, as work was abandoned soon after the brickwork of the first storey was completed. The work never resumed.”
The people living around the place rue that the ruins of the quarters have become a nuisance for the general public, as happens with every abandoned place these days. “Drug addicts, gamblers, and other anti-social elements have found a safe haven in these ruins, and the university administration has been a mute spectator all these years,” the locals told Kashmir Reader.
Besides, the locals rue that the ruins have become an absolute eyesore for the whole locality. “We do not let our children venture out for the fear of them getting exposed to bad company. The place shouldn’t have been left like this,” the locals lament.
A senior official in the university, requesting not to be named, said that the place was abandoned by the contractor working on it in the early 90’s and the situation has remained the same ever since.
“We have been requesting the contractor and the higher-ups in the university as well, to take correctional measures. But nothing has been done thus far,” the official said.
The Vice Chancellor of the university, Professor Nilofar Khan, visited the place recently and she was accompanied by the officials of the Estates department and construction department of the university.
She took stock of the facilities the people living in the area were getting and maintained that steps were being taken to further beautify the place, and restore its boundary wall for further security.
The Vice-Chancellor told Kashmir Reader that she has taken a stock of things and is now looking at the legal as well as other aspects of it. “Since the project has been in limbo for many years now it will need some work to revive. We are looking at the different aspects of it,” she said.

Suhail A Shah