The team at Vikramshila. Picture by Amit Kumar

Bhagalpur, Jan. 16: Confederation of Indian Industries (CII), eastern sector, has realised the importance of Vikramshila University in terms of tourism potential.

A high-level team, under the leadership of Saugat Mukherjee, regional director, CII, eastern sector, visited the excavated site of Vikramshila University at Antichak near Kahalgaon sub-division at Bhagalpur on January 15. The team was hopeful of motivating foreign tourists to visit the site when they visit Calcutta to attend a flagship invitation programme of CII for international donors on February 17 and 18.

“We are thrilled to come here and know about the long history associated with this university. We hope the foreign tourists would be happy if we bring them here,” Mukherjee told The Telegraph. He said during last year’s destination programme, the CII had the opportunity to handle 52 dealers and 150 domestic sellers. “The number of donors and tour package sellers would increase this time and we hope we can motivate foreign tourists who are scheduled to visit Gaya, to visit Vikramshila as well,” he said.

He said the CII team had actually came to the neighbouring Godda district in Jharkhand where the BJP MP (from Godda seat), Nishikant Dubey motivated them to visit the ancient sites of Vikramshila and Bateshwarsthan.

“For exploring potentials for industrial growth in the eastern states, the CII has been engaged to make an assessment of the nature of industrial developments that could help in utilisation of skilled work force available in such specific areas. For skill mapping and assessing tourism potentiality, we are inspecting some particular districts like Godda at Jharkhand but we have found much potentiality here,” he said. He added: “Places like Vikramshila have immense tourism potentialities. But for developing the areas we need infrastructural facilities from the state government first.”