Outsiders scare: Utkal to lock gate after dusk

BHUBANESWAR: The Utkal University on Thursday decided to lock its main gate from 6 pm to 6 am to prevent outsiders’ from entering the varsity.
Confirming the decision, varsity’s post graduate council chairman P K Mishra said the decision will be implemented once construction of boundary walls around the residential area of teachers is complete. The university security committee, presided over by Mishra, took the decision.“After the decision is enforced security personnel deployed at the gates will scan students before allowing them in,” Mishra said.
The university decided to segregate the residential areas of teachers from the students areas following a demand from the varsity teachers’ association in view of attacks on their residences.
The security committee also decided to increase the number of ex-servicemen deployed to provide security on the campus. Currently, there are 32 ex-servicemen. The varsity would increase it by another 20 soon, Mishra said.
The teachers’ association had asked the varsity to revive the security system by increasing the strength of ex-servicemen manning the campus, which the university had scaled down citing funds crunch.
As per the varsity’s original plan, it should have 40 jawans and four officers for internal security which would cost it Rs 6 lakh a month. The varsity, however, decided to scale down the numbers to just 36 jawans to reduce the expenditure to about 50%.