Delhi High Court notice on plea for DU hostels, safety audits of PGs

The Delhi High Court on Wednesday (September 9, 2026) issued notice to the Centre, Delhi government and Delhi University (DU) on a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) seeking formulation of a comprehensive policy to establish safe, affordable, and adequate hostel facilities for students of Delhi University across the Capital.

The plea has been filed in the wake of the September 6 collapse of multi-storey buildings being used as student PG accommodation at Satya Niketan, in which six people were killed and several others injured.

A bench of Chief Justice D.K. Upadhyaya and Justice Tejas Karia issued the notice while posting it for hearing on September 25, when another PIL on a similar issue is also listed for hearing.

The petition, filed by Mr. Vinod Jakhar through advocate Vimal Tyagi, also sought immediate safety measures for students currently living in private paying guest (PG) accommodations and private hostels, including structural and fire-safety audits of such premises.

The petition pointed to the acute shortage of institutional accommodation at the university, which, it says, has grown substantially since DU was established in 1922 as a “unitary, teaching and residential University”.

According the petitioner, DU has around 1.32 lakh students enrolled in regular programmes, while hostel capacity remains grossly inadequate.

The petitioner has argued that the shortage forces thousands of students, particularly those coming from outside Delhi, to depend on privately operated PGs, hostels, rented rooms and shared flats around their colleges.

Students, the petition says, often have no practical means of independently verifying whether such premises comply with structural, fire-safety and other statutory requirements.

“The issue is not confined to North Campus, South Campus or any particular college or locality. Colleges of the University of Delhi are situated throughout the NCT of Delhi and the shortage of safe and affordable institutional accommodation is consequently a University-wide problem requiring a University-wide policy response,” the plea said.

The petition added, “The absence of affordable institutional accommodation disproportionately affects outstation students and students belonging to economically weaker families and may, in practical terms, substantially increase the cost of accessing public higher education”.

While hearing a separate petition on Monday, the Court had ordered a high-level inquiry by the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) into the building collapse and made it clear that the government could not evade responsibility for the tragedy.

Calling the incident “most unfortunate”, the Court said such tragedies reflected inadequate measures by the MCD and other authorities and directed them to intensify rescue efforts to save lives.