Silicon Institute Students In Bhubaneswar Stage Protest Against Offline Classes

Bhubaneswar: The students of Silicon Institute of Technology in the city on Friday staged a protest against offline classes and examinations conducted by the institute authorities despite a surge in COVID cases.

Hundreds of students staged a sit-in in front of the institute’s entrance gate and raised slogans against the authorities. At a time when the state is reporting cases of Omicron variant and the city witnessing frightening rise in daily positive cases of COVID, how can the institute authorities are going ahead with offline classes and examinations, they asked.

Drawing the attention of the Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC), they said while the BMC is closing shops, hotels and malls and even declaring private residences as quarantine zones, it remains indifferent to private institutes where thousands of students have to attend classes.

They demanded online classes in the line of state government schools and colleges. In its latest COVID guidelines issued on January 5, the government has directed schools and colleges till Class XII to conduct online classes.