New Delhi: Availability of land is uncertain and its president has stepped down citing lukewarm interest from sponsoring body, but that did not stop the proposed Vedanta University in Odisha to apply for an eminence tag to be awarded by the Centre to top institutions.

The proposed Vedanta University, which has landed in litigation over acquisition of land for its campus in Puri district, has applied to the HRD ministry for Institution of Eminence (IoE) status this week.

Former Odisha chief secretary Bijoy Kumar Patnaik resigned from the president of the proposed university in October 2017 after being associated with it for over two years.

"Since the past two years, I have done my best to establish the university, but I found the Anil Agrawal Foundation was not interested towards the proposal to have a world class institution," Patnaik has told The Telegraph after submitting his resignation.

The foundation had signed an agreement with Odisha government in July 2006 to set up the institution on 7,000 acres on the Puri-Konark marine drive.

While Odisha government had acquired nearly 4,000 acres, local residents moved Orissa High Court against the move. In 2010, the high court struck down the acquisition and directed the state government to restore land to the original owners.

The Odisha government and Anil Agrawal Foundation have moved Supreme Court since then.

The NDA government at the Centre has started the IoE scheme under which 10 government and 10 private institutions will get a lot freedom, including deciding fee and recruiting more foreign faculty and students.

Greenfield private institutions, which are yet to start operations, can also apply for IoE status by producing their vision plan. The philanthropic arms of Reliance Industries and Bharti Enterprises have applied for IoE status for their proposed universities.

In September 2017, the HRD ministry and the UGC asked institutions to apply for the status within three months. Altogether 103 institutions had applied before the deadline ended on December 12.

The HRD ministry last month suddenly decided to reopen the facility for submission of the application from institutions that could not apply before deadline.

The deadline was extended till February 22.

Ten institutions, including Vedanta University, have now applied for the IoE status.

The other institutions to have applied of late include Pondicherry University, Periyar University and deemed universities like Kalasalingam and Chetinad.