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Rajya Sabha passes Bill to expand scope of Gati Shakti varsity
Parliament on Monday passed a bill to convert the National Rail and Transportation University, a deemed-to-be university in Gujarat, into ‘Gati Shakti Vishwavidyalaya’, an autonomous central university.
Parliament on Monday passed a bill to convert the National Rail and Transportation University, a deemed-to-be university in Gujarat, into ‘Gati Shakti Vishwavidyalaya’, an autonomous central university.
The Central Universities (Amendment) Bill, 2022, which seeks to expand the scope of the university beyond the railways to cover the entire transport sector, was passed by a voice vote in Rajya Sabha. It was cleared by the Lok Sabha on August 3.
Under the bill, special attention will be given to transport-focussed courses, applied research, skill development, technology development, and transport economics and infrastructure finance, Union rail minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said.
“The university will have global standards, and students who pass out will not only serve the transportation sector of the country but all over the world,” he said while responding to the debate on the bill in the Upper House.
Several campuses of the university will be set up in various parts of the country to encourage admissions.
“If we look at correlated institutes of the world, then MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) in the US is probably the best in the world. The way they have taken up transportation focussed courses and created the best cadre of people who are serving all over the world,” he said.
The university is named after the Centre’s flagship ₹100 crore-PM Gati Shakti National Master Plan that brings together several ministries, such as roadways and railways, for integrated planning and coordinated implementation of infrastructure connectivity projects.
“We are trying to create 21st century infrastructure in the country. For this infrastructure, an equally robust human resource has to be generated. Such a deemed university is being run by the Railways – a multi-sectoral, multimodal, multi-dimensional and multi-disciplinary institute – since 2018. Now, the time has come to expand it,” Union education minister Dharmendra had told the Lower House on August 3.
