Minister Pratap Keshari Deb launches the placement cell at Niyojan Bhavan in Bhubaneswar on Saturday. Picture by Sanjib Mukherjee

Bhubaneswar, Nov. 30: The state government today announced establishment of a second technical university in Odisha.

“The new university will be set up under the new Rashtriya Ucchatara Sikha Abhiyan (Rusa) scheme of the central government. It will be called BPUT-II,” said technical education minister Pratap Keshari Deb.

The idea was mooted to ease the burden on the existing Biju Patnaik University of Technology (BPUT), which now has 178 technical and professional colleges running under it.

“According to the guidelines of Rusa, an university should ideally hold not more than 70 to 100 colleges. The increase in the number of colleges has overburdened BPUT, which is functioning with limited staff,” said the minister.

The BPUT-II will function from the College of Engineering and Technology in Bhubaneswar and the colleges under it will be divided on the basis of regions. The technical education department plans to have at least four branches of BPUT when the number of colleges increases.

In a related development, the department today inaugurated a central placement cell for students of technical and professional education. A web portal, www.cpcdtet.nic.in, was also launched on the occasion.

While the cell for diploma engineering and the ITI skill development centre will function from Niyojan Bhavan at Ashok Nagar, the one for BTech, MBA, MCA and other professional courses will function from the Gandamunda campus of BPUT.

The centre will assist students in job counselling and placement, said technical education secretary C.S. Kumar.

The portal will contain a database of students, their specialisations, interests and academic performance along with the details of their colleges.