80 percent students working from home at IIT Kanpur; remaining 20 percent are in campus voluntarily

Kanpur: The reports of students being forced to leave the IIT Kanpur campus in the middle of the pandemic is totally incorrect. The fact of the matter is that no stone has been left unturned with regards to the safety and security of the students during the pandemic. In fact 80 percent of the students are still functioning from their respective residences and these include the students of the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd year undergraduate courses and some students in the final year undergraduate courses and masters and doctoral courses as well.

While the institute which has around 8000 students was completely closed since the pandemic broke out in March 2020 and online classes were conducted. From August 2020 since the situation was getting better, it was decided to open the campus on a voluntarily and phased manner in batches for 300-400 students and this continued till March. All precautions were duly followed with the students who came to the campus were initially confined to a 14 day quarantine which was later reduced to 6 days.

From the remaining 20 percent, there are around 100 cases both positive and suspected of students who have been quarantined in single rooms of the two guest houses and have been well taken care off by the medical staff armed with all the relevant equipment like PPE kits, medicines etc and are provided with meals four times a day. Their progress is monitored on a day to day basis. In addition, we have converted our yoga hall into a 40 bed covid care centre in case of more cases.

Given the alarming increase in the number of cases in the Institute and Kanpur, we have requested those students who are completely fit to return to the respective hometowns and had provided them with all possible assistance with RT PCT reports since it is the requisite of some states, flight/train reservations etc. The decision was taken since the students occupy shared accommodation where the chances of infections are very high, we did not want to aggravate the situation further, hence had requested all fit students to leave for their respective hometowns.

The institute is sensitive to personal problems of some students and will help them in every possible way (including permitting few students to stay on the campus if they cannot go home since members of their family back home are infected or their home is sealed or in containment zone or some such personal problem). All such students will surely be provided help.

Also we would like to inform that the students currently residing at the institute premises have come on voluntarily and there was no compulsion at all from the institute given the current situation. All examinations were conducted online and the semester was scheduled for completion on April 30.