Tripura University seek Bangladesh students

The Tripura University will launch a massive media campaign to attract Bangladesh students, its Vice-Chancellor Anjan Kumar Ghosh has said.

The Tripura University is a federally-funded university that is seeking to create several centres of excellence.

In 2012, it conferred an honorary D.Litt on Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.

“We are trying to admit more students from Bangladesh in our campus and for which we will advertise in their media,” Ghosh said while speaking to a delegation of Agartala Press club in his office.

“This will further strengthen the people-to-people contact between India and Bangladesh through exchange of students. We are aware that most of the important cities of Bangladesh are within close proximity of Tripura and from the queries across the border on the admission process we can well understand that large numbers of pupils are interested in studying here.”

At present there are only five Bangladeshi students studying in Tripura University.

Beside this there are also short time exchange of teaching faculties between Tripura University and various universities from Bangladesh.

A Centre for Bangladesh Studies was also proposed during that time by then Vice Chancellor Dr Arunadhoy Saha.

The university, located 11 km south of capital Agartala at Suryamani Nagar, was set up in 1987 and became a central university in 2007.

It was recently ranked fourth in eastern India and 43rd in India in a survey conducted by private study groups and India Today magazine.

The varsity has 15 post-graduate courses in science and 19 courses in arts and commerce.

Besides, the university has one-year post-graduate diploma courses in bamboo cultivation and resource utilisation, tribal language and rubber technology.

Meantime, a senior official in the National Institute of Technology (NIT), Agartala said that they also have provision for admission for students from neighbouring nations and Bangladeshi students are most welcome but they have to get admitted through the process of DASU (direct admission of students abroad) and counselling for which is done centrally.

Agartala-based ICFAI business school has already sought students from Bangladesh.

With Muslims being attacked or humiliated in mainland India after the BJP-led government came to power, Tripura is projected as a safe destination for Bangladesh students.

"We speak the same language, eat the same good, our culture is strongly secular and there is a strong emotion bond between Tripura and Bangladesh since the days of the Liberation War. Bangladesh students will be most comfortable here," said former VC Arunoday Saha.