Limited hostel rooms at Kalina, sky-high rents in the area put MU students in a fix

MUMBAI: Outstation students planning to enroll in postgraduate courses at Mumbai University’s Kalina campus are facing a tough choice - limited hostel rooms and sky high rents are forcing some to reconsider their plans.

- Niraj Pandit

While there are four women’s hostels at the campus, there’s only one for boys and one international boys’ hostel. The boys’ hostel, Karmaveer Bhaurao Patil Hostel, has a capacity of just 80 students but it packs in 110.

Students have asked the university authorities to allow them to use the newly built international boys’ hostel, which can accommodate 65. Reserved exclusively for foreign students, it currently has only 10 occupants.

The only other university boys’ hostel is Jugonnath Sunkersett Hall University Hostel at Churchgate. With a count of 178 students, it is far from the Kalina campus.

“I was admitted to the PhD programme in 2022 and received hostel accommodation later. But now the university has issued a circular saying that only students who have daily lab work are eligible for hostel rooms,” said Rajesh Patole, a research scholar from the Department of Civics and Politics. “This means students from humanities are being excluded.”