After Nalanda, Aryabhatta University In Bihar

After initiating a move to set up an international university in Nalanda, the Bihar government has drawn up a blueprint for setting up a professional university here.

The proposed Aryabhatta University, an autonomous body, will grant affiliation to government and private technical institutes in Bihar and act as a regulatory body for maintaining standards in these institutes.

Medical colleges of the state will also be brought under the jurisdiction of this university.

The state government plans to get the nod of the cabinet soon in this regard after which the bill for the proposed university is expected to be passed in the next session of the legislature this month.

'The prime objective of setting up the university is to develop professional education in response to the changing demands of the competitive world,' officials said.

Once the university comes into existence, it will act as a single-window clearance system for maintaining a uniform policy as far as technical educational institutes in the state are concerned, they said.

Meanwhile, the work to start an international university in Nalanda has already been started by the Bihar government.

Nobel laureate Amartya Sen will head a panel that will oversee the establishment of the university and its first meeting will be held in Singapore this month.

The proposed university will be fully residential, like the ancient seat of learning in Nalanda, which was once home to over 10,000 students and nearly 2,000 teachers. In the first phase of the project, seven schools with 46 foreign faculty members and over 400 Indian academics will be established.

The university will impart courses in science, philosophy and spiritualism along with other subjects. A renowned international scholar will be its chancellor.

The idea of the university was first mooted in the late 1990s, but it was President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam who gave shape to the initiative in early 2006.