Bhbaneswar, Aug. 15: The Centre for Sophisticated Instrumentation Facility proposed by the Utkal University would be delayed for funds crunch.

Earlier this year, chief minister Naveen Patnaik had announced a financial assistance of Rs 20 crore for the instrumentation centre. The amount was sanctioned in April.

Of the total Rs 20 crore, the university authorities had decided to use Rs 5 crore to set up the centre and spend the remaining Rs 15 crore on procuring high-end equipment. "We had also prepared the list of the equipment to be purchased. The list included atomic absorption spectrometer, field emission scanning electron microscopes and automated DNA sequencers," said a varsity official.

"However, the higher education department said it could not approve the proposal of procuring equipment as the announcement was only about the building of an instrumental centre. The funds for the instrumentation centre were granted under the infrastructure development of higher education institutions head by the finance department, and hence, cannot be used for any other purpose," he said.

The university, therefore, was not authorised to purchase equipment with the money, he said.

With experimentation being a major component of training and research, the centre was intended to provide students and teachers with access to sophisticated instruments for learning and advanced research.

The centralised instrumentation centre was proposed to be on the lines of other top universities in the country with all sophisticated instruments from the departments of physics, chemistry, biotechnology, biology and zoology under one facility.

Varsity authorities felt that researchers of different science departments of the varsity needed advanced instrumentation facility for quality research. "Since these equipment are extremely expensive, our scholars have been depending on other institutions," said a senior faculty.

"At present, equipment lie scattered in many departments. Almost all of India's top universities have instrumentation centres where sophisticated equipment are kept under a centralised facility and there is a dedicated maintenance unit for this. We had planned to replicate such model in Utkal," said vice-chancellor Ashok Das.