Daijiworld Media Network - Mangaluru (SP)

Mangaluru, Mar 5: Over 700 eligible students may be deprived of the hostel facility in the home district of the backward classes welfare minister this year.

The five taluks in Dakshina Kannada district have 72 hostels out of which 35 are in their own buildings, with the balance in rented buildings. There are 2,411 available vacancies in these hostels while 2,644 applications have been submitted. 1,599 students from Mangaluru taluk have applied for hostel accommodation. But officials in the department say that on the basis of current capacity, only 818 students can be accommodated.

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Sachin Kumar, district officer of the backward classes welfare department, says that in all other taluks, all the applicants have been accommodated and there are 590 vacancies. However, in Mangaluru taluk, there are 741 extra applications, he agreed. He said that normally, 90 per cent of students in residential hostels in Dakshina Kannada were from north Karnataka but because of Covid, the number of students in pre-metric hostels has come down drastically by 75 per cent.

MLA, Sanjeeva Matandoor, notes that monthly rent of about Rs 25 lac is paid for hostels run in rented buildings and high rent is also paid for old buildings that are in bad shape. He suspected that there is the possibility of internal understanding and wanted the issue to be checked in detail.