ROURKELA: The demand for setting up a Central Tribal University (CTU) in Sundargarh district has been renewed with the Nagarik Suraksha Committee announcing to raise the issue at its proposed mass convention at Rourkela on August 20.
Three days back, former general secretary of Steel Executives’ Federation of India (SEFI) Bimal Bisi had also written to Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan on the need for the establishment of a tribal university in Sundargarh to help develop the district into an education hub. The varsity will cater to the higher educational needs of students from the bordering tribal belts of Odisha, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh, he said.
A few months back, the Rourkela district Congress committee too had made the same demand with the preferred location at Rourkela.
Sources, however, believe that it is an uphill task for the people of Sundargarh to convince the union government on the issue. The demand continues to be used as a tool to corner the BJP. The incumbent Sundargarh MP Jual Oram has been facing accusations of failing to fulfil the demand during his second tenure as the union tribal affairs minister from 2014 to 2019.
Former director of the National Institute of Technology-Rourkela (NIT-R) and noted educationist Prof Sunil Kumar Sarangi said the Central Tribal University of Andhra Pradesh is the only one in the country which was created in 2019 after amending the Central Universities Act. Pointing to the distribution of Central Universities (CUs), he said there is no precedence of states having more than one CU.
Since Koraput has a CU, it is unlikely that the central government would allot another one to Odisha in Sundar-garh. Sarangi further said the union government would do well in instituting full faculty of tribal studies at the Central University of Odisha, Koraput. The Odisha government may also institute tribal studies in state universities in or near tribal-dominated areas, he added.