Lathis greet students

Parents and students tired of waiting for certificates demand meeting with Collector, cops lathi-charge them

For more than a week, Suresh Sharma (18) made the rounds of the Collector's office to get the required certificate for admission to an engineering college.

"I had submitted my papers on June 23 but till July 1, I have not received anything. The college authorities are adamant that I have to get the required certificate and they are not even willing to extend the dates for the submission," Sharma said.u00a0

Engineering dreams
Sharma was one among hundreds, who had been waiting to get the income, caste and domicile certificates, required for admission to engineering colleges in the city. The last date of submission was July 1, 5 pm.

The concerned parents and students then decided to stand outside the Collector's office and demanded to meet the Collector and his deputy. But they ended up getting lathi-charged by the police.

"The officials refused to come out of their cabins since 10 am. We even went to the office but the Collector was unavailable. We also tried meeting Anil Pawar, resident deputy collector and started demanding for our certificates but suddenly the police started beating the students and chasing us," said Nitin Doshi, who has been visiting the office for the last five days.

The police on the other hand justified their act saying that it was unacceptable to gather outside a government office and create a ruckus.u00a0

An official from the Bund Garden police station said, "Parents and students should respect senior government officials. They were not listening to the officials. So, we had to resort to a lathi charge."

Long delay
The certificates are among the must-required documents for securing admissions to engineering colleges. Some students had submitted their papers as early as June 22 and 23 and had still not got their certificates.
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Another student Rohit Rajput said, "I had applied for a domicile certificate on June 22 and am still waiting for it. My entire year will be wasted if I do not get it."

Slow distribution
After distributing only four certificates since 10 am yesterday, the officials started distributing them again after 3 pm to those who had applied for it on June 24.

Pawar refused to accept that the delay happened because of manpower crunch.
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"We had appealed to the students to submit the papers early but they did not. So, the papers were sent late. We need seven working days to give the certificates," he said.u00a0u00a0u00a0u00a0