Ranchi: Central University of Jharkhand (CUJ) has resumed efforts to set up a permanent campus at Kanke block along Ranchi Ring Road, nearly three years after work was abandoned owing to a CBI probe into alleged financial irregularities.
CUJ officials, said sources, were aiming to resume work across 319.28 acres at Cheri-Manatu from March 2018, the idea being to "start from scratch" to ensure transparency and avoid any further controversy.
Nand Kumar Yadav "Indu", the vice chancellor of the university that is now operating out of a temporary venue 15km from the Kanke site at Brambe, said resolving the stalemate holding up work to build the new campus was his priority.
On Monday, CUJ floated tenders on its website to formally announce the resumption of the stalled project.
"We have fixed a pre-bid meeting on our Brambe campus on December 20 for potential architectural designers, civil work contractors and so on. We shall undertake site visits on December 21 and 22. Model plans, along with other architectural designs, will be evaluated by special committees between December 29 and 31," he said, adding that the selected agencies would be announced on February 6, 2018," Nand Kumar said.
CBI began investigations into financial anomalies in CUJ in July 2014. The agency has questioned founding VC D.T. Khating and other officials, besides a host of contractors engaged in work on the permanent campus. Subsequently, the project was put on hold and CBI freezed CUJ's accounts.
Nand Kumar said he has been pursuing with University Grants Commission and the Union HRD ministry regularly to explore ways to ensure work continues without hampering ongoing investigations.
"Some of the issues have been sorted out. The biggest development to take place in the last year was that CBI has removed the names of six contractors from its chargesheet, while four CUJ officials and Khating were facing trials in CBI courts. As a result, UGC has given us a go-ahead," he said.
Nand Kumar said around Rs 626 crore had been allocated for the permanent campus from 2016-17 to 2020-21 fiscal years. "Now that the freeze on funds has been lifted, we can clear old bills and commence work. But our priority is to first get the master plan and architectural and structural designs prepared once again," he said.
The VC said he was planning to start work in March 2018. "Everything depends on how soon we finalise detailed project reports. We also need to construct roads and a 7km boundary wall and gates, which we couldn't do as the government hadn't begun compensating local land losers," he added.
