Bhubaneswar, May 3: The state government has sanctioned Rs 5 crore for the establishment of a centralised instrumentation centre on the Utkal University campus under the Rashtriya Ucchatar Shiksha Abhiyan (RUSA) scheme.

The centre that was proposed by vice-chancellor Ashok Das will have all major instruments at a centralised location.

"Experimentation happens to be a major component of training and research. In order to sustain the continuous interest of students, they ought to be provided with sophisticated instruments for teaching and advanced research," said Das.

"Currently, instruments in the varsity can be found scattered here and there. The centralised instrumentation centre will be a well-planned structure with all sophisticated instruments under one facility for their maximum utilisation and facilitate the academic and research community," Das said.

The varsity authorities have planned to develop the facility on the lines of other top universities in the country. It has been decided that all sophisticated instruments from the departments of physics, chemistry, biology and zoology will be brought under a single umbrella. Besides setting up the instrumentation centres, the authorities are planning to revamp the computer lab facility into a computational dynamic centre.

A total of Rs 20 crore has been sanctioned to the varsity and the fund will be used for the construction of an academic staff college, skill development centre with hostel facility, and an academic block for management, commerce and economics teaching departments.

"As per the announcement of the chief minister, the university also plans to set up a foreign language centre. In the first phase, Japanese, French, Spanish, Arabic and Russian will be taught," said the authorities.

The university has floated advertisements for the recruitment of 19 faculty members. Recruitment will be made for the 10 posts of lecturers, three readers and six professors. Advertisements for the post of principal for MS Law College at Cuttack has also been floated.

The first phase of financial aid has already been released by the government to five universities and 21 colleges of the state.

The human resource development ministry has decided to provide infrastructure grants of Rs 100 crore to Utkal University, Sambalpur University, Berhampur University, Biju Patnaik University of Technology and Veer Surendra Sai University of Technology. Each of the universities will get Rs 20 crore in a phased manner.