(From left) Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, IIT Kharagpur director SK Dube, its board chairman Sanjiv Goenka and magician PC Sorcar share a joke in Calcutta. Picture by Bishwarup Dutta

Calcutta, Nov. 7: Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee has written to human resource development minister Arjun Singh seeking two new universities in Bengal.

“We have asked for another university in north Bengal and an Indian Institute of Information Technology…. The minister has assured us funds in the 11th Plan for them,” the chief minister said at the unveiling of the foundation stone for IIT Kharagpur’s Rajarhat campus.

The 10-acre, Rs 250-crore campus, which should be ready in four years, will enrol over 2,000 students.

The thrust areas for the centre will be information technology, VLSI (very large scale integration) and embedded systems, media and communication technologies, information assurance and security, urban and regional informatics, human resource management, business administration and bio-informatics.

The institute will run short-term and post-graduate diploma programmes.

“The new campus will be a world-class education and research hub and work closely with industry and the government…. It will be a state-of-the-art research and development centre for promotion of industry in the region,” said Sanjiv Goenka, chairman, board of governors, IIT Kharagpur.

Taking a cue, the chief minister sought the IIT’s help in water and waste management, providing low-cost housing and tackling pollution. “Research must help the people... it should not be restricted to labs,” Bhattacharjee said while proposing a partnership.

IIT director S.K. Dube said: “We’ll be happy to join hands with the government to improve (the) quality of life for the people.”