Row brews over Calicut University's building plan

KOZHIKODE: Calicut University's move to build a mammoth Rs 40-crore administrative block building to house its top brass has landed the varsity in a soup.

The cash-strapped varsity's plans to splurge big on the building, throwing all financial prudence to the wind, suffered a blow with chief ministerOommen Chandy abruptly deciding to pull back from the foundation stone laying function scheduled for Thursday.

Syndicate sources said the entire project had been shrouded in a mystery from the beginning and that the varsity has even tried to hoodwink the government by changing the nomenclature of building into 'Central Academic, Science, Library and Administrative Block (CASLAB)' to tap government funds when it is originally intended as an administrative block. The government had cited that it would be difficult to sanction such huge funds for a non-academic building.

Though the varsity subsequently added academic elements to the building to get government funds, the tender documents accessed by TOI clearly states that the 'Phase-1 consists of administrative block, including office of the vice-chancellor, pro vice-chancellor, registrar, syndicate room, conference hall, academic offices and other connected offices including gate'. The document also states that 'subsequent phases of the project will be executed in due course subject to the availability of funds'.

"There has been an undue haste from the part of the vice-chancellor in awarding the architectural consultancy for the project without inviting expression of interest which was opposed by a section of the syndicate. Even there has never been a syndicate decision to construct such a building in the first place," syndicate member R S Panikkar said.

The mega splurge by the varsity, at a time when it is struggling to pay even salaries and pensions, has raised eyebrows among academic community which say that the varsity's obsession with the fancy project will drain even the sparse academic resources to fund the 16,650 square metre building.

"The building is intended just to serve the purpose of having an extravagant administrative block and is unlikely to serve any academic purpose. We don't know the rationale behind naming the building as CASLAB as the university already has a dedicated library and separate blocks for science departments. It is simply not practical to roll all science departments and labs into one," said academic council member and professor at the department of English M V Narayanan.