bdnews24.com New Delhi Correspondent

New Delhi, Nov 21 (bdnews24.com) – Come July 2010, and what SAARC had dreamt at a Dhaka summit four years ago, a South Asian University, may finally come real in Delhi by the middle of the next year.

India's external affairs minister S M Krishna said that the SAU would "hopefully" be operational by July 2010.

A regional university was first conceived at the SAARC Summit in Dhaka in November 2005.

"The establishment of the SAU is on schedule. We are in the process of acquiring 100 acres of land and are ready to disburse our financial commitment to the University," Krishna told a regional meeting in the Indian capital this week.

The conference, on 'Harnessing Business Opportunities for South Asian Economic Integration', was organised by the South Asian Association of Regional Cooperation, Indian Government's Ministry of External Affairs and Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industries in collaboration with the Asian Development Bank.

Krishna said that making the SAU operational would be an important achievement in the efforts to develop the SAARC brand and one of the most visible signs of the eight-nation-bloc's transformation from declaratory to implementation phase.

Sources added that Indian Government's Ministry of External Affairs had already acquired from the Delhi Development Authority 100 acres of land for the SAU. The site is located near the Indira Gandhi National Open University at Maidan Garhi in the national capital of India.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's Government had on July 2 last approved payment of India's contribution of US $ 239.930 million to the SAU. The Indian contribution is around 79 per cent of the total cost of the establishment of the university until 2014.

Sources in Indian Government said that New Delhi was ready to disburse the first installment of its financial commitment of US $ 9.464 million to make the university operational by the middle of the next year.

Singh, himself, had first mooted the proposal to set up the SAU, when he and other SAARC leader met in Dhaka in 2005 for the 13th summit of the bloc.

The Inter-governmental Agreement for setting up the university was later signed at the 14th SAARC Summit on April 3 and 4 in 2007. The SAARC Member States also decided that it would be established in India, while students and faculties would be drawn from all the eight member-states.

India's External Affairs Minister said that the SAU would provide world-class facilities and professional faculty to students and researchers from SAARC member countries.

The university is expected to start admission procedure next July and the academic session will commence in August or September.

"There is a consensus amongst the SARRC member-states that the university should be operational as soon as possible and we are working hard to welcome the first batch of 50 students in August or September 2010," said the SAU's Chief Executive Officer, Prof G K Chadha.

The university does not have any infrastructure yet, but efforts are on to have some buildings at the campus site before the first academic session starts. Officials of the SAU Project Office said that they might have to take some buildings on rent to commence classes, if minimum infrastructure could not be set up before the first academic session starts.

The university's project office now operates from a building in the Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi, but will shift to the campus site once the minimum infrastructure is ready.

The SAUPO has planned a 'modest beginning', enrolling 25 students each for two courses – two-year Master of Science in Biotechnology under the Faculty of Life Sciences and a three-year Master of Computer Application under the Faculty of Mathematical Sciences and Information-Communication Technology.

The draft course structures for the two academic programmes are now ready for scrutiny and approval of the Inter-Governmental Steering Committee on SAU.

"The intake will increase ten-fold to 500 students in 2011, and will reach its peak of 5000 students towards the end of the first phase of the university's establishment in 2014. We will start with a 20-member faculty, but will increase it to 100 by 2011 and to 500 by 2014," said Prof Chadha.

bdnews24.com/corr/rah/1252h