Varsity writes to PWD for early clearance

Lalit Mohan

Tribune News Service

Dharamsala, February 20

The case for allotment of land for Central University Himachal Pradesh (CUHP) at Jadrangal in the Dharamsala Assembly constituency is struck with the state Public Works Department (PWD).

The university had requested the state PWD to provide it maps for the proposed campus of the CUHP at Jadrangal in November last year. The maps were necessary for processing the case for transfer of forest land in Jadrangal to the CUHP.

The previous state government had proposed about 500-acre land for the CUHP campus at Jadrangal. The land has also been cleared by the committee appointed by the Union Ministry for Human Resources. However, since most of the land allotted at Jadrangal was forest land, clearance for its transfer for non forest use has to be granted by the special empowered committee for the union ministry.

The case for transfer of land has to be prepared by the state Department of Forest. However, for that they got to have the proposed construction plans for CUHP campus at Jadrangal land. VC of the CUHP Kuldeep Agnihotri, while talking to The Tribune, said that they had sent a reminder to the PWD authorities for preparing building maps so that the forest case for transfer of land can be processed. The functioning of the university was being affected as it was being forced to function from temporary campus, he said.

Executive Engineer PWD, Dharamsala, Vijay Chaudhary, when contacted, said the architecture department at Shimla had been requested to prepare building maps of the CUHP. “We have also requested the CUHP authorities to provide us the maps they had prepared for constructing the campus at Indrunag in Dharamsala. This can help us getting basic idea of the CUHP campus”, he said.

The executive engineer said that the architecture department is likely to visit the site with a week.

The CUHP, which was established in 2010, had been functioning from a temporary campus at Shahpur. A few months ago the previous state government had allotted new B.Ed College, Dharamsala building to the CUHP. Some of the departments of the university have now been shifted to Dharamsala. Earlier, the BJP leaders led by party MP Anurag Thakur had been lobbying hard for shifting the majority CUHP campus at Dehra while the Congress leaders wanted it Dharamsala. About 80-acre land at Dehra has already been transferred in the name of CUHP.