Nalanda Open University (NOU) is likely to get its own campus soon. The Nalanda district administration will hand over a newly constructed building to the university in March.
Established by the state government according to the provisions of the Nalanda Open University Act in 1987, NOU has been functioning from a rented building in Patna since its inception. A few years ago, it got a plot of the required 40 acres of land in Nalanda for the construction of its building whose foundation was laid by chief minister Nitish Kumar on March 1, 2019. The construction work, which was undertaken by the Bihar Educational Infrastructure Development Corporation, could not be completed due to the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic.
NOU registrar P K Verma told this newspaper on Monday that the construction of most of the proposed blocks had been completed and the entire campus was likely to be handed over to NOU in March.
He, however, pointed out, “Construction work has been done only on 10 acres of land made available for the university.”
NOU has already written to the education department that if it does not get at least 40 acres of land for its campus, the university will be derecognized by the University Grants Commission. Its demand is likely to be placed before the state cabinet soon.
Verma said, “The administrative block, academic buildings with examination halls, counselling centres and boundary walls have been built on the allotted land. The construction of rooms for faculty members and staff, study material storage and distribution centres, computer labs, guesthouses, and residential quarters will be taken up shortly.”
With the enrolment of around 1.25 lakh students in 120 courses, NOU is the second largest open university after Indira Gandhi National Open University in the country. It has altogether 220 study centres across the state.
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