Patna: The Aryabhatta Knowledge University (AKU) will launch its Centre for River Studies, Centre for Mass Communication and Journalism, and Patliputra School of Economics from the next academic session that starts in July 2018.

The three schools have been pending for years despite directives from chief minister Nitish Kumar.

The varsity's 18th governing board meeting was held on Tuesday, in which education minister Krishnandan Prasad Verma, vice-chancellor (VC) Arun Kumar Agarwal, pro-VC S.M. Karim, education department principal secretary R.K. Mahajan, and science and technology department principal secretary Arun Kumar Singh were present.

"At the meeting it was decided that all three centres will become functional soon," Karim said.

"For river studies the course syllabus is being prepared by teachers from IIT Kanpur, IIT Patna, NIT Patna and experts from some foreign universities too," he added.

The Himalayan University Consortium, a collaboration among the universities of India, Nepal, China, Bhutan and other Asian countries, is helping AKU in framing the river studies syllabus.

The Centre for River Studies, varsity sources said, has vast potential in a flood-prone state such as Bihar.

The focus of course will be to study the river systems so that natural calamities such as floods can be checked.

The governing board meeting also discussed the ongoing construction work of the university main campus.

Established in 2010 by chief minister Nitish Kumar as one of his dream projects, AKU aims to bring all technical professional educational institutions affiliated with different universities in Bihar under a single roof.

It has 93 educational institutes under it, including medical, engineering, pharmacy, B.Ed colleges.