Even as nine years have passed since the then President of India APJ Abdul Kalam laid foundation stone for the permanent campus of Biju Patnaik University of Technology (BPUT) here, construction works are far from over.
The lone technical university of the State is yet to have its own building ready at the Chhend Colony.
Construction works of the permanent campus are moving at snail’s pace with only the administrative building nearing completion. Works on the four key buildings including the advance learning centre and computer-cum-library centre are yet to start.
However, varsity officials said the administrative building would be made operational within a month and the whole campus would be readied in a year.
Vice-Chancellor J K Satpathy said he is hopeful of functioning of the new administrative building from next month.
“Presence of varsity officials in the administrative building would ensure better monitoring to fully operationalise the campus next year,” he said.
Ever since its academic session began in 2003-04, a camp office of the University is functioning from Bhubaneswar while BPUT’s main office is being operated from campus of UGIE here. Due to delay in construction work, the cost of the project has become dearer.
The University has 158 colleges, both constituent and affiliated, with around 1.2 lakh students.
The disciplines include engineering and architecture, business management and hotel management, computer studies and pharmacy. Several of these offer both undergraduate and post graduate studies.
Convocation on Sunday
The BPUT will hold its 5th convocation ceremony for 2009-10 and 2010-11 academic sessions on Sunday at the Civic Centre here.
As many as 20,678 under-graduate (UG) and post-graduate (PG) degrees in 13 disciplines for 2009-10 would be awarded, while the total degrees for 2010-11 would be 21,937. In the two academic sessions the BTech discipline with various engineering branches accounts for a whopping 29,841 degrees, while the lowest is at six for the post-graduate programmes in PhD discipline.
BPUT VC Satpathy on Saturday informed that BPUT Chancellor and Odisha Governor MC Bhandare would be present as convocation chairman and SAIL Chairman CS Verma would be the chief guest.