Fix North Campus Bus Stops - Safe, Lit, and Real for Every DU Student

If you have ever stood alone at a North Campus bus stop at night, you already know what this is about.We are students from Delhi University's North Campus, and we have been walking these streets with safety audit apps, cameras, and notebooks  documenting what every single student quietly accepts as normal but absolutely should not. In a stretch of just 1.5 kilometres outside some of the most prestigious colleges in India, we found 10 to 15 non-functioning streetlights. We found the bus stop outside Hindu College  ranked number one in the country  functioning more as a smoking lounge than a transit point, which by the way is a direct violation of COTPA 2003, a law that has existed since 2003 and explicitly bans smoking at bus stops. We found the Ramjas College bus stop coated in dust and rust so thick the route board is completely illegible. We found another Ramjas stop occupied as a makeshift shelter, entirely unusable by any commuter. And we found a major four-way intersection barely 100 metres from Hindu College gate that has zero permanent lighting  pitch dark the moment no vehicle passes. Our team had one word for it: haunting. This is not a description of a remote area. This is North Campus, Delhi.

Here's the part that should make every DU student stop and think. On 28th August 2025, the Delhi government relaunched the iconic U-Special buses - a service that hadn't run since COVID shut it down in 2020. Big ceremony, 50 electric buses, CM flagging them off at the DU Sports Complex, announcements about AC, CCTV, panic buttons, FM radio, and routes connecting 67 colleges. It made news everywhere. And genuinely, that restart matters. But here is what the news did not cover: the bus stops these buses are supposed to serve are broken. The routes cover only select colleges. Students at Hindu College, St. Stephen's, Ramjas and several others on North Campus either see no bus stop near them at all, or see one so dark, so dirty, and so abandoned-looking that waiting there alone  especially at night  is simply not a reasonable ask. Our survey of over 100 students in North Campus found that 45% have never once taken a Delhi bus despite living within 500 metres of a bus stop. 75% cannot name a single route near their college. 64% avoid the bus specifically because they do not know when it will come. The U-Special relaunch was a promise. The ground reality is still a broken one.

And this hits hardest for women. 62% of the people we surveyed are women students. Every dark bus stop, every shelter turned into a smoking corner, every approach path with dead streetlights is not an inconvenience for them ; it is a reason to spend money they may not have on an auto instead, or to not go out at all. Safe public transport is not a luxury. It is what makes a city actually accessible. We are demanding three things that are specific, achievable, and frankly not big asks for a capital city: that every North Campus bus stop gets functional lighting within 30 days; that DTC and PWD enforce a strict smoke-free and alcohol-free zone at all campus bus stops as the law already requires; and that permanent, legible route maps with QR codes linking to the One Delhi tracking app be installed at all stops covered under the U-Special routes. One digital signature from you takes 30 seconds. It becomes evidence in a brief we are carrying to DTC, to PWD, to the Vice Chancellor's office. We are not asking for anything new to be invented. We are asking for what already exists - the law, the buses, the infrastructure budget  to actually show up for the students it was meant to serve.

Sign this. Share it with one person who studied at or knows DU. That's all.