Civil society bats for Unitary varsity status to Burla engineering college

The Pioneer, 8th Spetember, 2008
Pioneer News Service Bhubaneswar

The demand for Unitary University status for the University College of Engineering (UCE) Burla is gaining momentum as the civil society has geared up the campaign for the cause in a big way.
The campaign committee for Unitary University status for the UCE consisting of intellectuals, educationists, political personalities and informed members of the civil society has urged Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik to promulgate an ordinance to declare the college a Unitary University. Giving the wakeup call, the UCE Abhiyan Samiti has asked Patnaik not to ignore the demand, which would be too late for tomorrow.
This first engineering college of the State, which was once within the top 10 such colleges in the country, is languishing at present due to continuous neglect over the years, lamented former MP Bhabani Sankar Hota. It has been a victim of a step-motherly attitude of the State Government aided and abated by the wrong policies of the Union Government, he alleged. It is most unfortunate that the college is being kicked like a football from one post to another, feel senior citizens.
The UCE was a constituent college of the Sambalpur University, and in spite of many shortcomings it had earned name and fame in and outside the country as engineers produced by it found places in various prestigious institutions like the NASA and the BARC. The UGC granted autonomous status to the college in 1992, but the serious deterioration started once the college was detached from the Sambalpur University and attached to the Biju Patnaik University of Technology (BPUT).
The students, faculty and the public in western Orissa demanded up-gradation of the college to an IIT and, as usual, the Chief Minister wrote to the Union Government in this regard in 2004. But when the real opportunity to upgrade the college into an IIT came by an announcement of the Union Government, another site was selected in Bhubaneswar.
The people of western Orissa in general and the citizens of Sambalpur in particular view this as an instance of grave injustice perpetrated on the region and its people. An impression is gaining ground that there is no logic as to why all higher institutions such as the Central University, IIT and such other institutions of national importance should be concentrated in and around the State Capital.
Such a step is contrary to the policy of decentralisation and against the policy of opening up of opportunity to the backward areas of the State. The concentration of institutions of national importance in the State Capital, ignoring the sound infrastructure already available at places like Burla would harm the State in the long run, warned the Abhiyan Samiti.
Under these circumstances, the demand for Unitary University status for the UCE is both realistic and constructive, said Hota. Therefore, the Abhiyan Samiti has urged the Chief Minister to promulgate an ordinance declaring the UCE as a Unitary University and release both recurring and non-recurring grants adequate for running an institution of national importance.
Similarly, providing 400 acres of land adjacent to the UCE and giving an opportunity to both the faculty and the students to retrieve some of its lost glory, which was caused by unhelpful attitude of the successive Governments, would go a long way in a systematic improvement of the institution, feel the members of the Abhiyan Samiti.
Non-resident Oriyas (NROs) have also justified the demand of the students and civil society for declaring the UCE as a Unitary University. They argue that in the event of the Naveen Patnaik Government adopting "a partisan attitude" towards distribution of national level educational institutions, several parts of the State are bound to face marginalisation.
For a leading NRO, Prof Chitta Baral, "Orissa is not Bhubaneswar-Cuttack-Puri (B-C-P)." The land of 1, 55,707 square kilometres has to be seen beyond B-C-P, said he. Digambara Patra, another leading voice on education matters among the NROs, echoed Prof Baral's view. He has sought to prove with factual data that the Chief Minister is allegedly marginalising western Orissa in the interest of the coastal region.
Patra said that just a few days before sending a letter for an IIT and a Central University in the State to the Union Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD), the Chief Minister had written a similar letter to the MHRD asking to convert the UCE to a National Institute of Technology (NIT). He jolly well knows that the MHRD has often pointed out that NIT would be established in those States where there is no NIT presently. That means the letter was just to mislead the western Orissa people, Patra alleged.