BU delegation to meet CM, Deshpande to discuss imminent split

A delegation of Bangalore University (BU) officials will meet Chief Minister Siddaramaiah and Higher Education Minister R V Deshpande soon in connection with the recent decision of the State Cabinet to split the varsity into three.

A decision to this effect was taken at a meeting of the university’s syndicate here on Tuesday. The delegation will urge the government to keep Central College and
Jnanabharathi campuses with the parent university. The university is also keen on keeping the University Visvesvaraya College of Engineering (UVCE) with BU.

“We want the central part of Bengaluru to remain with BU. Central College is the identity of this university. This is where the university was set up in 1964. It does not make sense to have more than one university operating out of the same locations,” Vice-Chancellor Prof B Thimme Gowda told reporters after the syndicate meeting.

Prof Gowda suggested that the two other universities could come up in Kolar and Ramanagar. There have been earlier instances of upgrading a postgraduate centre to a university. But students here should be given the option to stay back in the parent university if they so choose, he said. The vice-chancellor made it clear that the two other universities would have to be developed by creating separate infrastructure for them, and not by dividing the existing infrastructure with BU.

The university syndicate discussed the budget, too, at its meeting. The estimated receipts for 2015-16 are Rs 381.24 crore and the estimated expenditure Rs 423.79 crore.

Even though its division is imminent, the university has allocated funds for both Kolar and Ramanagar PG centres. According to the V-C, Rs 10 crore has been set aside for construction works at the Kolar PG centre and Rs 1.6 crore for the Ramanagar centre. The works, however, will be taken up only after the government takes a conclusive decision on the locations of the two proposed universities to be carved out of BU, he added.