In 2014, a brutal racial assault on a student from Arunachal Pradesh in Delhi triggered many protests and much soul-searching on problems faced by people from the northeast living and studying in the rest of India. A panel formed to study their concerns and suggest solutions and measures noted the need for dedicated accommodation for them. Citing it as a positive feature, it talked about how a hostel dedicated to northeast students was being planned at the Jawaharlal Nehru University.
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The new hostel has indeed come up, more than 10 years later, after much delay. The plaster peeling off and the cracks on the walls of a facility built at a cost of more than ₹28 crore are only a few of the unkept promises, though. The most glaring one is that Barak Hostel houses only 12% of students from the northeastern States today, according to the student president of the hostel, Hrishikesh Talukdar.
Taniam and the committee
Nido Taniam was an 18-year-old first-year student from Arunachal Pradesh studying in a college in Delhi who died following a brutal racial assault in the national capital.
He was in Lajpat Nagar on January 29, 2014, when he stopped at a local shop to ask for directions. Some men reportedly made remarks about his hair and hurled racial slurs at him. A confrontation ensued, and Taniam was allegedly assaulted by a group of men who beat him with sticks. He was taken to the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in Delhi, where he died the following day. According to the autopsy report submitted by the Delhi Police, Taniam suffered nine internal and external injuries, including injuries to his head, lungs and face, which caused his death.
Taniam’s death, and the protests that followed, brought a fresh attention to the discrimination, hostility and insecurity experienced by people from the northeast outside the region.
In its aftermath, the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), in February 2014, constituted the Bezbaruah Committee, headed by M.P. Bezbaruah, then a member of the North Eastern Council (NEC), a statutory advisory body constituted under the North Eastern Council Act, 1971. The committee was tasked with examining the concerns of the people from the northeast living in different parts of the country.
Among the concerns noted by the committee was the need for safe and adequate accommodation. In its report, the committee referred to a proposal for a 500-room facility at the JNU. It noted that the university authorities were ready to implement the project and recommended that it be sanctioned immediately.
But it took several years for that recommendation to acquire a physical form. The Ministry of Development of North Eastern Region (DoNER) agreed to fund the project, following the signing of an MoU between JNU and the NEC. At that time, the Aam Aadmi Party was in power. The agreement provided ₹28.30 crore for the project, with 75% of the hostel’s seats to be reserved for students from the Northeast region and the remaining 25% for students from other parts of the country.
In July 2017, Dr. Jitendra Singh, then Minister of State for Development of North Eastern Region (Independent Charge), laid the foundation stone for what would eventually become Barak Hostel on the JNU campus.
A press release issued at the time stated that the NEC was funding 100% of the construction, at a cost of ₹28.30 crore. The hostel was expected to be completed within three years and accommodate 400 students — 200 boys and 200 girls. Of these, 320 seats were to be available to students from the northeast and 80 to students from the rest of the country.
The hostel was eventually completed in 2024, but remained unoccupied for another year, with the university citing shortage of staff. It was then virtually inaugurated by Union Home Minister Amit Shah on April 7, 2025. On the same day, JNU’s current Vice-Chancellor Santishree D. Pandit conducted the ribbon-cutting ceremony to formally open the hostel.
Main promise not kept
Barak Hostel was conceived as more than a building providing beds and rooms. It was conceived as a dedicated space for students from a region whose experiences of discrimination and exclusion had prompted the government to promise a safer and more inclusive university environment. Almost a decade after the foundation stone was laid, however, questions surrounding Barak Hostel extend beyond the promise of inclusion.
On the very day of the Vice-Chancellor’s opening ceremony in 2025, the North East Students’ Forum (NESF) organised a silent protest outside Barak Hostel. During the protest, JNU Vice-Chancellor Santishree D. Pandit was heard saying in a video that there would be no reservation for students from the Northeast in the hostel. The video, recorded by protesting students, is on YouTube.
Today, as of August 2026, the hostel houses 420 students, but only 53 of them are from the Northeast, barely 12%, Mr. Talukdar said. The original mandate was 75% reservation.
Students from JNU’s NESF have repeatedly raised the issue with the university administration. They have approached the Dean and Vice-Chancellor, filed Right to Information (RTI) applications, and held protests, seeking clarity on the hostel’s and government’s original mandate. Yet, they say, the issue remains unresolved.
More problems
And while the dispute over whom the hostel was built for continues, another question has emerged — the infrastructure itself. Almost a decade after its foundation stone was laid, and barely two years after construction was completed, Barak Hostel is already showing visible signs of deterioration.
Moss has appeared on its walls; balconies and washrooms face waterlogging; toilet seats are broken; doors broken; Wi-Fi is inadequate; and the hostel has no mess facility, say students.
The Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), which The Hindu has accessed, stated that JNU would assign the work to public works agencies, including the Delhi State Public Works Division, for civil and electrical works. The State Public Works Division is a key operational unit of a State Public Works Department (PWD), responsible for the planning, design, construction and localised maintenance of public infrastructure.
Paint peeling off walls in Barak Hostel
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An RTI was filed by Hrishikesh Talukdar, who is also the Assam State representative of NESF, seeking information on the non-operationalisation of the mess. In its reply dated July 30, 2026, the JNU administration said that it had first approached the Ministry of Education (MoE) on February 24, 2025, seeking financial assistance of ₹2.15 crore as annual recurring expenditure, along with a one-time grant of ₹50 lakh, to operationalise the mess. The proposal included expenditure for cooks, helpers, sanitation workers, security guards and other staff required to run the hostel and mess.
In the RTI reply, JNU said the MoE responded on March 19, 2025, and subsequently forwarded the university’s proposal to the University Grants Commission (UGC) for examination and appropriate action. However, the RTI reply does not clarify whether any funds were eventually sanctioned or released. JNU also said that no specific deadline had been fixed for opening the mess, and that there had been no meeting exclusively between the JNU and the MoE on the issue.
The funding issue also extends to Wi-Fi facilities at the hostel. On June 10, 2026, JNU’s Dean of Students, Professor Manuradha Chaudhary, wrote to the DoNER seeking a one-time grant of ₹2.69 crore for installing and operationalising Wi-Fi at Barak Hostel. The university said its Communication and Information Services (CIS) had prepared an estimate for the infrastructure, but the facility could not be installed due to a lack of funds.
JNU also cited a joint visit to the hostel on March 10, 2026, during which a Monitoring Committee, including officials from the MHA and DoNER, had recommended that DoNER consider supporting the WiFi installation. However, according to the Barak Hostel Committee’s August 3 representation to the Vice-Chancellor, DoNER subsequently rejected the funding request.
An electrical distribution board with its cover hanging open, exposing internal circuit breakers and hazardous wiring at Barak Hostel, JNU.
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The NESF then questioned the rejection, pointing out that the minutes of a JNU meeting dated March 11, 2026, had recorded that DoNER should be approached for funding for both the mess and WiFi. The students have now sought clarification from the university on both funding proposals: whether the UGC sanctioned or released funds for the mess, what components were approved, and, if funds were provided, why the mess remains non-operational; and why DoNER rejected the WiFi proposal despite the earlier recommendation to consider funding it.
In its latest representation to the MHA, the NESF raised concerns over the 75:25 allotment ratio of the hostel. The letter mentioned that rooms had been allotted to non-northeastern students and, in some cases, even to non-students, while legitimate applications from northeastern students seeking accommodation had been rejected. In the same letter the NESF also highlighted the hostel’s non-operational mess, absence of WiFi connection, inadequate sanitation and dustbins, lack of recreational and sports facilities, water leakage and other maintenance and structural issues – It urged the monitoring committee to intervene with the JNU administration.
