By IANS
Patna : It is now official. Outgoing President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam will be offered the post of "Visitor" in the proposed international university in Nalanda by the Bihar government.
An official in Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar's office said Wednesday: "The government will request Kalam to accept the post as soon as his tenure as president will end in the last week of July".
The idea of the university was first mooted in the late 1990s but it was Kalam's initiative in 2006 that gave shape to the project at the ancient site of Buddhist learning. It is regarded as Kalam's dream project.
The Bihar government is keen to have Kalam as Visitor to guide and monitor the running of the proposed university. If Kalam accepts the Bihar offer, the process of appointing the vice chancellor and framing of regulations will start in consultation with him, official sources said.
According to the University of Nalanda Act 2007, the Visitor will play a key role in the constitution of the governing body, which will be the supreme body of the university.
The Visitor will have the powers to inspect the varsity and appoint one or more persons to review its work and progress.
The first meeting of the Nalanda Mentor Group, headed by Nobel laureate Amartya Sen to oversee the opening of an international university in Nalanda, will be held in Singapore this week.
Attending it will be Singapore foreign minister George Yeo, government officials from China and Japan, Lord Meghnad Desai, Sugata Bose, a grand nephew of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose who teaches at Harvard, and experts on Buddhism. Singapore, China and Japan are expected to fund the university.