BANGALORE: With eight buildings in various stages of completion and Rs 80 crore spent, the situation looks grim for many departments in Bangalore University as students are either being made to attend classes in other departments or forced to sit in half built rooms with no doors or windows.
Registrar Dr BC Mylarappa and other officials, during an inspection on Wednesday, discovered that a majority of stalled projects in the Jnana Bharati campus were due to non-payment of dues to contractors.
The new building for the Centre for Applied Genetics is almost 90 per cent complete and for the past three years has been functioning without doors or windows .
With eight rooms and two toilets, PG students are currently attending classes in the rooms. Mahesh, an engineer for Vasudev Contractors who constructed the building said that the firm had been paid only `7 lakh from a total budget of `40 lakh for the entire building.
The construction of a campus for the Visual Arts Department was started 4 years ago and the construction has been stopped for the past two years for the same reason. The officials said only `2.5 crore of a `4 crore budget had been released. The building which was one of the first to incorporate assistance for physically challenged visitors stands in a dilapidated condition today.
The other buildings like the swimming pool have been lying unused for around four years now because tile replacement work which had to be carried out was delayed upto a point where all the tiles in the pool became faulty.
“Because of a few tiles then, all the tiles will have to be replaced now. We also have to get the water purification plant checked for damage. Everything has been lying unused even though we have a class for swimming instruction,” rued Kirtinarayan, a BU official.
Perhaps the most shocking observations to be made on campus are the health centre and the PG Hostel for men. During the inspection, the team found that the health centre rooms lacked doors and the toilets were dark because there were no lights. The hostelites alleged that they were forced to share a room meant for two people with up to three more. “The toilets cannot be used at all. There is no water. The building is crumbling due to water leakage. Why should we stay here?” asked a visibly frustrated Raghu, student.
Registrar Mylarappa said, “All projects we have seen today are at 90 per cent completion and have not been finished due to non-payment of funds. I do not want to point fingers at anyone. I shall make a report and submit it to the syndicate at the next meeting.” He added that he would take the matter up with the VC.
Meanwhile, VC N Prabhu Dev claimed that he had not been informed of the inspection and attributed the blame for the delay in payments to the university engineer. He also said that the report of a task force set up for the issue was still awaited.