Bihar plans to set up 4 new universities, bills likely in Budget session

One university will be exclusively for the medical stream, while another will be for engineering. At present, Bihar has nine government and six private medical colleges.

The Bihar government is set to establish four new universities – each varsity dealing with a specialised stream - and the bills for them are likely to be placed before the Bihar Legislative Assembly in the forthcoming Budget Session.

The Bills proposing to establish four new universities, is likely to be placed before the Bihar Assembly in the forthcoming Budget Session. (HT FILE PHOTO).

“The work on the four bills is in advanced stage and they will soon be given final shape,” said a senior government functionary, who did not want to be quoted.

One university will be exclusively for the medical stream, while another will be for engineering. Since 2010, all the medical and engineering colleges are under the Aryabhatt Knowledge University (AKU). AKU started functioning from 2010 with the objective of regulating all technical institutions by bringing them under one umbrella.

AKU will be left with some specialized centres of excellence. At present, it has four autonomous centres – Centre for Geographical Studies, the Pataliputra School of Economics, Centre for River Studies and Centre for Journalism. There is a plan to set up three new centres for Philosophy, Stem Cell and astronomy. The objective is to make it a research university, said an official of the AKU.

However, with engineering and medical institutions moving out of AKU, sources said it could face resource constraint and would have to entirely depend on the government grant.

Prior to 2010, all the engineering and medical colleges were under different universities and they were all brought under one umbrella of AKU. A decade later, the government has now felt the need to have separate universities for medical and engineering.

At present, Bihar has nine government and six private medical colleges. Besides, a plan is for afoot for opening 11 more. In addition, AIIMS, Patna and Indira Gandhi Institute of Medical Sciences (IGIMS), Patna are autonomous institutions imparting medical education.

In the engineering field, currently Bihar has around 50 colleges, including 38 government-run institutions. Once a separate university is formed, all the colleges will shift from AKU to the new university.

Two other new universities in the pipeline are for art and culture and sports. The University for Art & Culture is to be located at Madhubani and will cover institutions dealing with music, dance, fine arts, theatre as well as contemporary visual performing arts, while the Sports university will be set up at Rajgir.

In 2018, Bihar had carved out three new state universities from old universities at Patna, Purnea and Munger to take the total number of state-run universities in the state to 17, which include a Persian university, a Sanskrit university, an agriculture university, a veterinary university and an open university. The three state universities were created after two-and-half decades. Besides, Bihar also has a law university.

Bihar has also added a number of central institutions in the last one and half decades--- IIM, IIT, NIT, National Institute of Electronics and Information Technology (NIELIT), two central universities, NIFT etc.