Santiniketan: Bangladesh Bhavana at Visva-Bharati will not be opened to the public, as the varsity planned, on August 8, the death anniversary of Rabindranath Tagore.
The 44,261sqft two-storied building with a museum, auditorium, library, cafeteria and seminar halls was inaugurated jointly by Narendra Modi and Sheikh Hasina on May 25.
Sabuj Koli Sen, the officiating vice-chancellor of Visva-Bharati, told The Telegraph: "We need some time to put in place complete infrastructure at Bangladesh Bhavana. We want to open the Bhavana to the public with proper arrangements. The Bangladesh government has been requested to release a corpus of Rs 10 crore as it promised earlier. We have also written to our chancellor (Prime Minister Narendra Modi) to sanction a similar amount to maintain the building properly."
According to a rough estimate made by the varsity, it will need around Rs 80 lakh annually to run the Bhavana smoothly.
On Thursday, a team from Bangladesh deputy high commission will meet varsity officials regarding the opening of the building.
On July 22, senior varsity officials headed by the officiating VC and chief coordinator of Bangladesh Bhavana Manabendra Mukhopadhyay held a meeting where it was decided that the building wouldn't be opened to the public before the end of September.
After the inauguration, the varsity had planned to open it to the public and common visitors on Baishey Shravan (death anniversary of Tagore), which will fall on August 8 this year.
Senior varsity officials said there were at least half a dozen reasons for the delay in the opening.
"There is no CCTV camera inside the building and auditorium. CCTV cameras have been installed only for surveillance outside. At the meeting, Visva-Bharati asked the National Building Construction Corporation (India) to arrange CCTV cameras to cover the entire building," said a varsity official.
The NBCC, a central government agency, has constructed the Bangladesh Bhavana.
"So many artefacts and memorabilia of Tagore donated by Bangladesh are inside the museum. If we open the museum, we need CCTV surveillance," said the official.
Besides, security guards are needed and leaks and other faults detected at the building after the inauguration have to be repaired.
