When a building housing students collapsed in Satya Niketan, the tremors were felt in Sikkim too. “In Delhi we saw the building collapse, we were also afraid that our building would collapse. The students and teachers should be safe, that’s why we called for an academic shutdown.”
That fear, voiced by Durga Prasad, a fourth-year student at Sikkim Government Law College (SGLC), was not abstract.
Just days before students shut down academic activity at their own crumbling campus in Burtuk, Gangtok, a decades-old, five-storey building housing a students’ paying-guest accommodation collapsed in Delhi’s Satya Niketan area on September 6, killing at least six people, most of them students, after water had accumulated in its basement during repair work.
For SGLC’s students, watching visible cracks spread through their own college building, the Delhi tragedy was not a distant headline but a preview of what they feared could happen to them.
We Wrote a Representation of 37 Pages
Durga Prasad described the sequence of events leading up to the shutdown. “Our college has had an academic shutdown that started on August 27. There was a presentation, students met with the education department and told them about the bad condition we’re going through: seepage in the library and all the problems affecting our academics and studies. We wrote a 37-page representation and gave it to the education office. We wrote that our demands were to fix the seepage in the library, the cracks in the pillars, and the seepage in the classrooms. We asked for immediate action. We also asked, as a long-term demand, for an auditorium, playgrounds, and hostels for boys and girls. We told the department to take action, otherwise we would go on academic shutdown.”
He said the Department’s response, delivered on the 14th day, fell short. “The education department secretary and the engineer came with a letter meant to address our demands, but the letter didn’t actually take up our needs as students. Those needs weren’t addressed, so we went ahead with the academic shutdown.”
The Written Representation
A copy of the representation, addressed to the Additional Chief Secretary, Higher Education Department, Government of Sikkim, and dated August 27, 2026, lays out the students’ grievances across ten thematic sections, backed by a technical assessment from the Education Department’s own Assistant Engineer.
It asserts that the College, “being the first and only Government law college in the State of Sikkim,” occupies a significant position in the state’s higher education system, but that its “existing infrastructure has reached its functional limits,” warranting “immediate and substantive intervention… rather than further piecemeal or temporary measures.”
Seepage and structural damage
The Library is described as “the most seriously affected facility,” with water leakage that “made it extremely difficult for students to use the Library for regular study and legal research” and damaged books, furniture, and equipment.
This is corroborated by an official site-visit report from the Assistant Engineer, dated July 1, which records “widespread seepage… across all floors” caused by the absence of proper roof projections and a deteriorated slab, and recommends waterproofing and roofing works “before the next monsoon.” Visible cracks in the basement, attributed to soil erosion from an adjoining natural water channel, were flagged as a serious safety concern, “Students should not have to attend classes and carry out their regular academic activities while being faced with visible signs of damage to the building.”
Missing facilities
The representation states the College has no hostel, forcing outstation students to pay roughly ₹8,000 per month for private accommodation, “a considerable financial burden… particularly [for] those coming from rural areas and families with limited financial means.”
It also has no proper auditorium, inadequate sports infrastructure, and no access to standard legal research databases such as SCC Online or Manupatra. Students warned that the college’s lack of NAAC accreditation could be jeopardised further if its infrastructure wasn’t addressed before any future assessment, a concern given its otherwise respectable NIRF rankings (30th and 28th in past years).
The representation set out six immediate demands, covering structural repair, library restoration, an auditorium, hostel facilities, sports infrastructure, and initiation of the NAAC accreditation process, and required the Department to either begin remedial work within 14 days or furnish a written, time-bound action plan.
It warned that failure to act would lead students to approach the Sikkim High Court and to consider “complete suspension of academic activities.” The Sikkim High Court has since taken suo motu cognizance of the matter.
The Resolution
Officials from the Education Department visited the College on September 10, the day the 14-day deadline expired, but students said the written communication delivered did not provide the clear, time-bound action plan they had demanded.
On September 11, the Chairperson of the Student Welfare Board visited and, according to students, acknowledged that their demands were genuine, though students maintained they would not consider the matter resolved without a concrete implementation plan.
That engagement ultimately produced an agreement, the SRC and general students accepted a 45-day timeline sought by the Department to carry out repair and renovation work, bringing the shutdown to an end. Students said they would continue attending classes online through this period while work is carried out on campus, and that they would monitor its progress closely.
Shrijan Pradhan, another student at the College, struck a hopeful note. “Now that the Department has given us 45 days, we are hopeful that proper renovation work will be carried out in the College and that our major demands will also be addressed within this period… We are hopeful that this time the 45-day period will bring actual work and not just another assurance.”
Also Read: From ‘No More Dams’ to a CBI FIR: The Bhanu Tatak case in Arunachal
You just read a story that took days to report. Help us keep our reporters on the ground in the Northeast.
Ad-free reading, support and keep important stories alive
Support once (any amount)
Scan to pay via UPI