PTI
 
Chennai, Mar 21: The renewed protest by students of Sathyabama Deemed University turned violent on Tuesday, with some students going on a rampage in the university campus.
The students are demanding steps to obtain the All-India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) approval for engineering courses offered by their institution.

The students, who renewed their protest last week after a gap of a fortnight, allegedly set the security guard room on fire and smashed glass panes in the university building, police said.

They were also agitating against the suspension of 60 odd students for indiscipline, police said. The students of deemed universities across the state have been agitating for the past one month, with the AICTE issuing a circular that the courses run by these institutions, without its approval were not valid.

The institutions had contended that there was no need for AICTE approval as they came under the University Grants Commission (UGC) and have challenged the AICTE's notice in the Madras High Court, which had stayed portions of it.

The student protests in the first week of this month had turned violent in the SRM Institute of Technology, another deemed university on the city outskirts, leading to the arrest of eight students on charges of vandalising a computer lab.