BENGALURU: The 98-year-old heritage stone building of the Government Pre-University College and High School at Malleshwaram 18th Cross, which hosts about 2,000 students, will soon get a facelift.
The Hhigher Education Department had been looking for collaborators to revamp the building and found one in the Jain Group of Institutes. Institute chairman Dr Chenraj Roychand is said to have responded favourably to Deputy Chief Minister Dr C N Ashwath Narayan’s proposal for carrying out the renovation.
College Principal Ratnakara Shetty told The New Sunday Express that the school had 1,739 students in PUC and about 150 in high school till last year. The PUC section was started in 1972, while the high school division started in 1923. “The Deputy CM himself studied in the high school for about six months,” Shetty said.
Block Education Officer (BEO) Uma Devi told TNSE that the building has windows as tall as five feet, which need to be repaired. The floors also need a lot of polishing. “The plans for repair are under way. It’s great that such a heritage building is getting renovated. This will set a precedent for other such government buildings,” she said and added that over the past two years, the college and high school has started accommodating girl students as well.
“The building has a total of 22 rooms, of which 12 are classrooms and the rest are labs and offices,” she said. When renovations are under way, the students can be either shifted to one section of the building, or to the new building, which is right behind the heritage one. An official from the Higher Education Department said that as per estimates from experts, the renovations will cost around Rs 4 crore and will take at least a year.