Bhubaneswar, April 18: Weaving dreams of the best in education, industrialist Anil Agarwal today touched down in Orissa to seek land for a $1-billion university touted as ?India?s version of Harvard, Stanford and Oxford?.

Agarwal, chairman of the London-based Vedanta Resources Plc, met chief minister Naveen Patnaik and his team of officials at the state secretariat this morning and made a presentation on the proposed university.

Representatives of AT Kearney, management consultants for the campus, accompanied the Vedanta chairman who spoke to the chief minister for over an hour. Agarwal, who expressed confidence that the university would stand Orissa in good stead, has sought 5,000 acres near a large waterbody.

Patnaik is learnt to have shown interest in the proposal and has asked chief secretary Subas Pani to do a survey on the likely project sites.

?We want to set up a university that will be of the calibre of leading institutes such as Harvard, Stanford and Oxford,? Agarwal later told reporters here.

Government sources said the university could be set up somewhere near Chilika Lake.

Before coming to Orissa, Agarwal had sought land in some other Indian states, including Bengal. But the Left Front government, caught in poll preparations, could not find the time to give the proposal a serious thought.

The university project assumes significance as Vedanta Alumina is currently engaged in setting up a 1-million tonne refinery in Kalahandi district at an estimated cost of Rs 4,000 crore. The unit is likely to be commissioned by March 2007.

Based on a ?not-for-profit? philosophy, the university will strive to impart world-class education and drive a cutting-edge research agenda. The campus has an envisaged student strength of more than 100,000 in the long run.

The university?s academic and research agenda would reflect its multi-disciplinary vision with colleges focused on a variety of disciplines like liberal arts, basic sciences, engineering, medicine, law and performing arts.

Besides, centres of excellence for cross-disciplinary research in areas like agriculture, health sciences, rural economics and manufacturing sciences would also be part of the university.

The colleges would include graduate, postgraduate and doctoral programmes.

The university, said sources, will aim to nurture all-round excellence, beyond the academic dimension, to produce Nobel laureates and community leaders.

The vision also entails development of an education and research township around the university.