Vedanta varsity project to kick off in September

The construction work of multi-billion dollar Vedanta University at Puri in Orissa will start in September.

The university, modelled on internationally famed campuses like Oxford and Stanford, is being set up under the aegis of the Anil Agrawal Foundation. The project, in its full scale, is estimated at about Rs 15,000 crore.

The first phase work of the project, comprising the construction of a medical college and super speciality hospital, will start in September, said A K Samal, vice-president (Commercial and projects), Vedanta Resources, here.

Talking to reporters after a review meeting chaired by Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik, he said the project was progressing in accordance with the plan.

The state government has provided 300 acres to the company. The company had sought 8,000 acres for setting up the multi-disciplinary university, medical college and hospital. However, the land requirement was later scaled down to 6,270 acres. Of this, 600 acres is government land, the remaining being private.

The acquisition of private land for the project has started and the company is hopeful of taking possession of 1,500 acres before September, when the first phase of construction is scheduled to start.

Ruling out any problem in land acquisition, Samal said there was no problem of displacement. Only 150 families are likely to be displaced and they will be resettled in accordance with the policy of the state government. The company has already deposited Rs.27crore for the first phase of land acquisition.

Vedanta university, which will provide teaching and research facilities in engineering, humanities, pure science, medicine and other frontier subjects, will come up in phases.

The full project is expected to complete by 2020. However, the first batch of admission is slated to start from the academic session 2009-10, Samal said.

Regarding the designs of the proposed university, he said, the entire architecture for the university and the hospital is being prepared by California based Roshni Thomas. 'The building will be modern and the designs will be based on Indian traditions', Thomas, who was present in the review meeting, said.

Orissa chief secretary Ajit Kumar Tripathy said the progress of the project is satisfactory. He said like other universities of the state, the government will enact a separate legislations on Vedanta University and Ravishankar University.

Besides, the government is considering to enact an umbrella legislation for such universities which may come in future. He made it explicit that there will not be any environmental and rehabilitation problem for the project.