According to a PUCSC press note issued here today, PUCSC members and some 50 SOPU activists marched to the university Administrative Block to protest the recent fee hike which they described as "unprecedented". The protesters forcibly closed the fee counters and sat in dharna inside the building.

University Registrar Dr Paramjit Singh met the students and assured that the fee hike would be reexamined.

Randhawa appealed to all student organisations to support the PUCSC anti-fee hike agitation. The agitation call was repeated in another press note, issued by the Panjab University Students' Union.

The Students' Council will meet tomorrow.

Students Welfare Dean, Prof V.K. Bansal, when contacted, maintained that today's agitation arose out of a misunderstanding. He said: "Last July, the university increased some fees but these hikes were not approved by the Syndicate. The students protested and subsequently the fee hike was reduced. At that time, some students paid fees below the stipulated amount; now the university is trying to recover the balance in these cases. "Students have misunderstood this as a hike in fees. No fee has been increased; the university is charging the fees agreed upon. Tomorrow we will compare the fee charged now and the fee charged earlier and if there is any discrepancy or mistake on the part of the staff, it will be corrected."

Bansal noted that the students disturbed fee collection for about an hour "but there was no strike".