With university proposing to reserve half of its seats for students from West Bengal, could this clause be the reason for the delay ?

Sources at the university said that a number of times the Union Human Resource Development Ministry has hinted that the university should drop the reservation clause.

“At present, we do not have any reservation. But it is not an absurd idea to reserve half of our seats for Bengal students once we achieve the status of a national institute,” said a professor at the university.

The university authorities, however, maintain that the reservation clause, which state government had described earlier as a “tough bargain”, has nothing to do with the delay.

“We had a satisfactory discussion with the HRD minister and now it is up to the Center to decide when to grant the national status to the university,’ said BESU’s Registrar Biman Bandopadhyay.

Earlier this week, Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee wrote to the Prime Minister urging him to grant the IIEST status from the next academic session. But this is not the first time that the issue was brought to the notice of the Central government.

On September 4, 2008, Minister for Information and Broadcasting Priya Ranjan Dasmunsi had also written to the Centre to initiate an IIEST Bill in the Monsoon Session of Parliament.

Earlier, Pranab Mukherjee had asked the government to look into the issue.

In August last year, the university had submitted a modification in its fund allocation plan, cutting its expenditure during the 11th Plan period.