St. Xavier's College will have 210 more seats in BCom (honours) this year. Classes will be held on the college's new campus at St. Lawrence High School in Ballygunge.

The new students - both girls and boys - will be divided into three sections. St. Xavier's has already received about 1,500 applications for the St. Lawrence campus alone.

"This year we have 210 students with three sections and next year we might add two more sections. The 210 seats are in addition to the 1,200 students on the main campus and 60 on the Raghabpur campus in South 24-Parganas," said Father J. Felix Raj, the principal of St. Xavier's College (Autonomous) and president, St. Xavier's College (Calcutta) Alumni Association, on Wednesday. "We might add a couple of sections in BBA as well." The Raghabpur campus will also introduce a history course from this year.

Classes on the St. Lawrence campus will be held from 3pm to 8pm. Space constraint at Park Street had prompted the college authorities to consider utilising the the St. Lawrence campus.

"Most schools function till 2pm or 3pm, after which they remain locked up. We realised that the facilities could be put to use," said Father Felix Raj. "There is an increasing need (for expansion). Every year, we receive around 40,000 applications for various courses. This year it went up to 45,000."

The college at present has a student strength of 8,000 but Vision 2020 sets a target of "16,000 students on the rolls". For this to be realised, the Rajarhat campus, which will house the university, needs to come up soon.

"Though the state government, and especially the chief minister, came forward and invited us to upgrade St. Xavier's College to St. Xavier's University, we wanted to take time so that we could expand physically to allow academic upgrade," the principal said.

Construction has begun on the Rajharhat campus.

The college has also built two hostels, with a total capacity of 500, on AJC Bose Road - the one for boys was opened in the last academic session and the one for girls will be inaugurated on July 4.

The Educational Multimedia Research Centre in Park Circus will soon be shifted to the Bypass and all courses in mass communication, journalism, videography, film studies, animation and multimedia will be held there,

The college needs Rs 350 crore for the Rajarhat and Bypass campuses, of which Rs 80 to 100 crore has already been spent, the principal said. Two fund-raising programmes will be held in San Francisco and Los Angeles in October.

St. Xavier's will also set up a college in Asansol from the 2015-16 academic session.