After its decision to reopen, the varsity sprung into action to welcome back all undergraduate and postgraduate students to classes from 17 February. The cleaning and revamping process has been taken up on war footing.

However, the application process for admission into hostels may not be expedited. 

“The hostel has a capacity to accommodate 56 students. We have begun preparing the rooms by putting a fresh coat of paint on the walls. The room allotment process was done online,” the news agency quoted Sanjeev Kumar Tiwari, the principal at Maharaja Agrasen College, as saying. 

Indraprastha College for Women principal Babli Moitra Saraf is hopeful that the application process for the college hostel will begin from Friday. But she also cast doubt on whether students will be able to come back to colleges at such short notice.

“Restoration, deep cleaning and sanitisation are things that we will take care of. But there are more important things like the hostel admissions have to done first for the students of first and second year. We are making a list of availability of seats and vacancies,” she said.

“By tomorrow evening, we will start the application process. Accordingly, we will open the hostels as students are coming in. We have to wait and watch how the situation unfolds,” she added.

Another task for the college administration is to ensure rooms are ventilated and there is enough space for two students.

“We will have to see the size of the room and if it’s a small room, only one student will be allowed. The hostel list can’t come out on February 17 and will take a couple of days more. This usually happens every year. After the admission process finishes, the hostel list is prepared,” said Kirori Mal College principal Vibha Chauhan.

Chauhan agreed with Saraf and said they will begin the hostel allotment first.

“First we will invite applications from students who want to stay in hostels and then prepare a merit list. There’s a hostel committee that takes care of this. We will follow the usual procedure,” Chauhan said.

Pankaj Arora, Dean Students’ Welfare, DU, said, “Each hostel has a management committee and they will decide on the further processes. We had a meeting with hostel provosts day before yesterday (Tuesday) and we advised them to complete the process of hostel allotment online so that students know where they will be going after they return to Delhi.”

“Arranging isolation facility is the prerogative of the hostel and if students wish, they can complete their three-day isolation period somewhere else and then come to the hostel,” Arora said.

Besides ensuring that social distancing guidelines are followed, to check the safe resumption of offline academic activities, officials are also facing the mammoth task of ensuring early allotments of rooms to outstation students.

DU colleges were closed in March 2020 after the Covid-19 pandemic broke out in the country. 

The varsity had given a go-ahead to the resumption of practical sessions in February last year, but after the emergence of the second wave, classes were suspended in March.

In September, the university allowed final year UG and PG students to return to campus, but the attendance was thin.

With inputs from agencies.