Swanky campus for vet varsity

Deepender Deswal

The newly set up Lala Lajpat Rai University of Veterinary and Animal Sciences (LUVAS) will have a new corporate-style campus on the Sirsa road on the outskirts of Hisar town. It will have an environment-friendly building, which has been designed to ensure efficient use of energy and water in the construction area as well as in the open space on the campus.

The construction of the new campus on 1,124 acres on the Sirsa road has started after a long wait of about eight years. Right now, the work on three buildings of dairy and veterinary sciences college, administrative block and the Vice-Chancellor’s office has started. The rooftops have been designed to have panel fittings for solar energy generation to be used on the campus. All walls of the buildings will have glass-reinforced concrete (GRC) mesh fixings. The GRC mesh is alkali resistant, of high impact strength and requires minimal maintenance, besides being environment friendly.

Trilok Nanda, Estate Officer of the university, says that the four-storey buildings have been designed to stand above the raft foundation; the buildings that come above the raft foundation are considered 100 per cent earthquake resistant. He adds that the buildings will have a corporate look and have modular laboratories.

Nanda says that there will be four buildings, one each for veterinary college, dairy science technology institute, para veterinary institute and allied sciences institute. Every building having four floors will have three lakh square feet of space with the ground floor meant for parking. "The dairy science technology institute, administration block and the Vice-Chancellor's office are under construction at an estimated cost of Rs 120 crore. The construction of these buildings in the first phase is expected to be completed by 2020. In the second phase, three hostels (one for girls and two for boys), 124 houses and a library will be completed by 2025. The bulk facilities such as electricity, sewerage, roads and horticulture will be interrelated and there will be minimum bare land on the campus.

The sewage treatment plant will help in recycling waste water that will be utilised for watering the landscape and plants. All buildings and the Vice-Chancellor's office will be in a circle with a library in the middle. He adds that 550 acres will be for fodder and farms and the remaining will be for horticulture, buildings and landscape.  

The previous Congress government had on December 1, 2010, decided to bifurcate Chaudhary Charan Singh Haryana Agriculture University (HAU) by upgrading its veterinary and animal sciences college to university. The LUVAS has been functioning from the existing infrastructure available on the HAU campus.

However, the construction of its own building was delayed as the university authorities and the district administration were unable to finalise land for its new campus. After the site for the university campus was changed twice, Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar intervened and about 1,124 acres on the Sirsa road (National Highway No. 11) on the outskirts of Hisar town were earmarked for the purpose.

On August 15, 2011, the then Governor Jagannath Pahadia had laid the foundation stone of the new campus on the Barwala road. The proposal was dropped after the Airport Authority of India (AAI) in November 2013 objected to the proposed building close to the airport. Later, another site was earmarked across the Barwala road and the authorities even floated tenders for the work. But that site too was cancelled later.