Thanks to the lackadaisical approach of the Bihar government the issue of land has, like in the case of the off-campus branch of the Aligarh Muslim University, become a bone of contention.
The CUB has been running from a temporary office in Patna for the last two years, but even its expansion programme is not possible as the state government is refusing to give it more space.
The Union Human Resource Development (HRD) Ministry has repeatedly rejected the Nitish Kumar government’s offer to give land in Motihari in East Champaran district, instead of Patna or some other central location.
The state government’s plea is that Motihari has been chosen because the coming up of a Central University would help Champaran, the land from where Gandhiji started his Satyagrah in 1917, develop.
However, the Union government is of the view that a Central University so much away from Patna or any other centrally-located place would discourage new faculties to join it. If Patna-based Chanakya National Law University and Chandragupta Institute of Management are facing acute shortage of faculties how would any reputed teacher go and join in flood prone East Champaran district where there is chronic power crisis and other related problems. Motihari also lacks air connectivity.
After all the Central University is being opened to enhance the academic environment and not to develop the infrastructure of Champaran, which is the state government’s work. Sources are of the view that after all the Centre government has offered to open three more reputed institutes in small towns of Bihar. Why then force this one too to open in Motihari, it is being asked.
The Centre has opened IIT in Bihar but in the last about four years it is running in Pataliputra Polytechnic in Patna. The state government has finally decided to give land in Bihta, about 40 km from Patna. But the first batch which took admission in August 2007 will be passing out next month. Because of the absence of infrastructure the new IIT in Patna failed to attract students and good faculty members.
Former President A P J Abdul Kalam’s brainchild the Nalanda International University is also coming up far away from Patna in Nalanda. Though the Centre had set up a Mentor Group under Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen, there was controversy over land allotment. Some local villagers even threw mud when the chief minister along with the former President Kalam visited the site some months back.
Even the AMU off campus branch is not free from controversy. While the Aligarh Court decided to open the new branch in Katihar the state government said that it would not give land in that district. Instead it announced to allot land in Kishanganj. This was stoutly opposed by Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, the students wing of the alliance partner the BJP. On April 1, 2010 the ABVP even announced Bihar Bandh in protest against the allotment of land in the bordering district. It wants the off campus branch to be opened in Katihar. Thus the issue of allotting land for AMU too has not yet been finalized. In contrast in other states, even neighbouring West Bengal, the off campus branches have started functioning.
In case of CUB its Vice-Chancellor, Prof Janak Pandey, said there is a plan to open six Master’s programmes, which is not possible in the present situation because of the lack of space.
The irony is that the chief minister Nitish Kumar’s own brainchild, the Aryabhat University of Science and Technology, is running from a one-room office with a Vice Chancellor and a peon near Gandhi Maidan for the last one year.
What is strange is that when the state government is unable to provide land, the chief minister recently held the Centre responsible for not opening a Central University in Patna.
It seems that the Nitish Kumar government is not much concerned about developing education in the state rather than indulge in populist measures and demonstrative works like distributing uniforms and bicycles. The bicycle scheme was first introduced in Tamil Nadu a decade back and the uniform distribution scheme was taken up even in Bihar some three decades back. But they did not last long nor did it yield desired result.
Whatever may be the shortcoming of the previous state governments it needs to be made clear that land seldom became a bone of contention for any central government project. Be it the East Central Zone in Hajipur or Railway Workshop at Harnaut or a large number of projects of railways or other ministry land transfer were done in no time. The Zonal Office started functioning in its own building within five years. This notwithstanding the fact that Mamata Banerjee became the railway minister in between for several months and stalled the work.

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