Construction of PUs Muktsar centre will commence soon

Archit Watts

Muktsar, July 17

Almost eight years after the allotment of five acres along the Government College here, the Panjab University Regional Centre (PURC) is set to get its own building soon. The construction wing of the university has proposed to make some classrooms at the ground floor of the proposed three-storey building in the first phase.

Presently, the PURC is being run from a rented building of the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC) on Tibbi Sahib road here, which was declared unsafe about a decade ago and was repaired later. Inaugurated in 1998, the institute presently offers courses like MA (Political Science, Punjabi, Economics and English), MCA and LLB at a nominal fee.

Muktsar PURC Director Manish Jindal said, “A committee of four senators and the executive engineer of the construction wing of the university had recently visited the site. The building work will begin soon. This project is in the stage of final approval now. As of now, there is just a boundary wall at the site.”

Similarly, executive engineer RK Rai said, “The construction work of the PURC building in Muktsar will start soon. We are hopeful that the classes will be held in the new building in the academic session of 2025-26. The total estimated cost of the building is nearly Rs 40 crore, but we will initially do work of the ground floor due to paucity of funds.”

Notably, earlier, it was planned to install a pre-fabricated structure at the new site, but that too was not done. Thereafter, it was planned to shift the PURC to a rented building of a private college on Kotkapura road here, but that did not happen either. A proposal was also made to shift the Muktsar PURC to the Panjab University Rural Centre (PURC) at Kaoni village in Gidderbaha Assembly segment here and merge both the centres. However, it had triggered a major controversy and the idea was dropped.

During his tenure as Chief Minister, Charanjit Singh Channi had announced to give funds of Rs 10 crore for the construction of this centre in December 2021, but to no avail.