PANIC gripped thousands of single tenants living at several hundred residential messes in the city as police are raiding such facilities to nab militants. College and university students and office going bachelors are facing serious Uncertainty in the situation while house-owners remain in doubt whether or not to rent houses to bachelor tenants. A fear of harassment has been hunting the landlords after the attack in Gulshan Café and operation at Kalyanpur house where nine suspected militants were killed. Subsequently, police held a leading University Professor for renting out his flat to the Café attackers and the wife of the Kalyanpur building for renting out the flat to the suspected militants.
News reports said many house-owners who rented their houses to bachelors are now asking to vacate them and notices were hanged in the gate of many houses not for bachelors have spelt accommodation crisis for 2-3 lakh single students and employees. Nobody is ready to take the risk of militants who may be living in those messes. Police search and house-owners’ extra cautions have already turned the bachelors’ life unwelcoming in the city.
Thousands of admission-seekers to colleges and universities who come from rural families are passing an uneasy time now to find living accommodation. Meanwhile, anxieties of their guardians run at the peak. It is indeed a highly critical time never experienced by bachelors in the city before. It is highly unusual now as students are watched at schools, colleges, and universities. Not only students are panicked, their guardians are also passing sleepless night as to what report may come on the activities of their wards.
We don’t know when such vigilance on common students would end because the government believes that the specter of militants’ attacks may only be held under control by watching all students; which is not fair. It is true law enforcers must scan each and every corner to deny hide out to militants but widespread harassment of students is bound to spread panic and may prove counter-productive at the end.
We know most educational institutions have not sufficient hostel facilities or rented accommodation. But when students attempt to hire a flat or house, house-owners now obviously look at them with suspicion. Although by refusing to rent, they also incur huge financial losses. Raiding messes would not end the militant tendency, rather the government should find out which factors are responsible for the breeding of militancy in the country? In our view, the government must ease the prevailing political and social conditions to uproot militancy as militancy rapidly grows in the undemocratic land. The house-owners also realize all youths are not trendy to militancy; there are thousands of youths who are studying attentively to materialize their dream. So, renting out flats to single people is profiteering in all ways and today’s youth are tomorrow’s nation-builder.
