BJP MLA Pramod Kumar. Picture by Ajit Kumar Verma

Motihari, Oct. 2: BJP MLA from Motihari Pramod Kumar has said that the setting up of Central University of Bihar (CUB) here would be the best way to pay tribute to Mahatma Gandhi on his birth anniversary.

Pramod in a letter to the President of India, Pratibha Patil, demanded that the CUB be set up at Motihari in Champaran, which is regarded as the karmabhoomi of the Father of the Nation.

In his letter, the MLA has urged Patil to persuade the Union human resource development minister, Kapil Sibal, to fulfil the demand of the people in the district.

“Every party has been agitating for the cause in their own way. This (the setting up of CUB in Motihari) has become a demand of the general people of Champaran,” the letter said. The MLA also assured to provide a temporary arrangement for the CUB in Motihari till the university does not get a permanent address.

In an interview to The Telegraph on August 16 this year, Congressman and general secretary of district Freedom Fighters’ Association Kapildeo Narayan Singh, (105), had threatened to go on a hunger strike if Sibal did not give in to the demand of the people.

Recalling Gandhi’s first visit to Champaran in 1917, Singh had said: “Gandhiji had concentrated not only on the freedom struggle but also towards the social and educational awareness of the backward people here. Eventually, he also founded the first basic school of the country in this district.”

In 2008, chief minister Nitish Kumar announced that CUB would come up in Motihari, while speaking at a function of an engineering college here. In the next few months, the district administration also completed the required formalities, including sending the proposal of three different sites in and around the town.

However, the state and the Centre have locked horns over the site of the construction of the university. While the Centre wants the CUB to be close to Patna, the state has been insisting on Motihari.

The CUB has been asked to vacate the Birla Institute of Technology (BIT), Patna campus, from where it has been functioning since 2009. Acting vice-chancellor of the university Janak Pandey is yet to get any reply to the letter, which he sent to the BIT authorities in Mesra.

“We are running the varsity in a rented building with consent of state government. How can the place be vacated unless any understanding is arrived at with the state on the fate of the students?” he said.