She said that girls from North-East came to Delhi either for education or for job. Their language and culture both are different from North India.

"They are exploited by certain elements. Such reports have been received by the DCW. To facilitate them proper lodging, the commission will construct working women hostels near universities and other institutions," she said.

Swati landed in the city a week back from Patna with her brother and is staying at her relative's place.

Her priority is not to get a good course in a good college. It is actually girls' hostel that she is looking for. "I have only applied for the colleges where hostels are available for girls," she says. Girls' hostels are primarily available in the girls' colleges in Delhi University.

"I didn't want to study in a girls' college but I also wanted residential facility, which narrowed down my choices substantially," says Natasha from Hisar.

In the end, Natasha made a choice and decided to take up a room in one of the many PG's available around the North and South campuses of the University.

However, the problem continues on end. "The PG has closed down and I am looking for another place now," she says.

Delhi University has always had a crisis of residential facilities for girls. Mr S. K. Vij, the Dean of Student's Welfare, says that the University authorities are quite aware and sensitive about the issue.

"We have tried to maintain a balance as far as the hostel facility for post-graduation girl students is concerned. Colleges, however, are autonomous bodies. There's not much we can do about them," he says.

"A detail proposal is being prepared for this project. The PG students and UG students will stay together and this will be like a students' village," Vice Chancellor Prof Deepak Pental said today.

The university has about 30 acres of land near the Metro station which can be used for the purpose. The varsity will seek funds from the government for the purpose, he said.

The university has presently 12 hostels. However, there is a demand for more hostels since a lot of students from other states come to the university for studies.

The university only caters to postgraduate and research students. There are 10 colleges on and near DU's North Campus. Three women's colleges, namely Miranda House, Daulat Ram and Indraprastha have hostel facilities. Among the co-ed colleges, St. Stephen's, Hans Raj, Ramjas and Shri Ram College of Commerce (SRCC) provide campus residences for women students. Some colleges have approached the University Grants Commission for money to build rooms for undergraduate students.

As of now, approximately 900 freshers get admitted in various programmes at the UG and PG levels. However, with the implementation of the first phase of OBC quota, there will be an overall additional intake of 200 students. ``We will build new classrooms which will be bigger than the usual size to accommodate the increasing number of students from next year,'' said Anurag Sharma, dean, students, IIT-D. A new lecture theatre complex is also under construction on the campus.

In what it describes as "a historical decision", the Commission has raised the assistance amount from Rs 25 lakh to Rs one crore for non-metro cities and to Rs 2 crore for metro cities in order to facilitate and support women's education.

The UGC has pointed out that the dearth of hostels is "not only in the institutions exclusively serving women" but in some of the "established, old co-educational institutions of the country, which, in the earlier decades, largely catered to men students when there was little mobility for women to seek education in places other than their own residential locations".

The commission's decision taken in June this year is aimed at "providing hostels and other infrastructural facilities to achieve the goal of enhancing the status of women and harness the potential available for the development of the society at large, as also to bring about gender equity and equal representation of women".