Steps on Odia virtual varsity

The Odisha Government has started preparations for setting up the Odia Virtual University for digitisation of Odia language and its propagation in the digital world.

BHUBANESWAR: The Odisha Government has started preparations for setting up the Odia Virtual University for digitisation of Odia language and its propagation in the digital world.
A preparatory meeting was held under the chairmanship of Chief Secretary Aditya Prasad Padhi at the State Secretariat here on Saturday in this regard. The functioning of different virtual universities is being studied to facilitate formation of such a university in Odisha.It was decided to immediately register a society consisting of   linguists, specialists, and government and non-government organisations working on digitisation of Odia language to process forward.

Underscoring the need for setting up the Odia Virtual University, Development Commissioner R Balakrishnan said conservation, development and propagation is a basic necessity for the growth of a language.  A roadmap for this should be prepared within a stipulated timeframe, he said.
Senior official from Tamil Nadu Uday Chandran threw light on the style of functioning of Tamil Virtual University. The meeting also discussed digitised syllabus, digitisation of Odia language, Odia Unicode, Odia keyboard for computers, and digitisation of old manuscripts and books. Besides, digitisation of technical and higher education course books, Odia Wikipedia and digitised corpus in Odia language among other things were also discussed.

The State Government has made a budget allocation of ` one crore for the proposed university.
It was decided that progress of the work for setting up the university will be reviewed every month by the Chief Ninister and every 15 days by the Chief Secretary.
The Culture Secretary will review the work every week. Principal Secretary in the Finance department Tuhin Kanta Pandey, Special Secretary in the General Administration department Ashok Meena and senior officials attended the meeting.

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