Nalanda University website resurfaces with new name

21/01/2012

Patna,(BiharTimes): The official website of the Nalanda International University, which went off sometimes back is once again back but with a different name: nalandauniv.edu.in. As reported in the BiharTimes, earlier the University went off the internet, days after the expiry of the term of its interim Governing Board. The earlier official website was www.nalandauniversity.org. A search into the domain name registry reveals the last back-end updating had taken place on November 29 last.

The website was launched on October 6, 2011 coinciding with Prof Amartya Sen’s Open Session on Nalanda University at New Delhi’s Nehru Memorial Museum & Library.Surprisingly, this International University was running without any website since its inception on November 25, 2010. The project itself was being pursued without a website and utmost non-transparency since July, 2007.

The registration of the earlier website was controversial to begin with. It was registered in the name of one Ashu Gupta, at the address of an NGO viz. Goonj. He was founder of the NGO and a CNN-IBN Real
Life Hero Awardee.

Interestingly, the space left for Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar’s message in the new website too has been left empty.However, an important issue raised by BiharTimes has been rectified. Now the word
Azad has been dropped from the name of former President Dr A P J Abdul Kalam. Perhaps the authorities in NIU mixed up his name with India’s first education minister and former President of Congress party, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad.