Now, Vedanta’s Puri varsity dead on the water

As the Anil Agarwal-owned Vedanta Resources battles to save its one million tonnes per annum alumina refinery project at Lanjigarh in Kalahandi district of Orissa from the axe of ministry of environment and forests, the much-vaunted Vedanta University project at Puri in the state is for all practical purposes a closed chapter, says an Indian Express report.

The proposed Rs15,000-crore university seemed futuristic and sounded good when Agarwal signed the memorandum of understanding in 2006 with the Orissa government. It was claimed that when completed the world-class multi-disciplinary university over an area of 6,800 acres on the Puri-Konark marine drive would be at par with Harvard and Oxford universities.

The university, when fully operational, was to have an intake of 100,000 students, with cutting-edge research facility in 95 academic disciplines. But local opposition, problems over land acquisition and the MoEF's spanners seem to have taken the wind out of its sail.

''The project is as good as over,'' the paper reported an unnamed Vedanta official as saying. The company's officials confirmed that Vedanta has shifted 26 of its 30 staff at the site to other locations and all work has been put on halt, the report adds.

Though the Anil Agarwal Foundation (a registered not-for-profit entity controlled by members of the Agarwal family) had acquired 4,500 acres of the 6,892 acres allotted to it on paper, it was unable to take physical possession of the land due to local opposition. Even the initial plan to build a 500-bed super-speciality hospital at the site met with hostility, the official added.

The first bottleneck for the project came in March this year when the Orissa lok pal, justice P K Patra recommended a moratorium on the project till the foundation complied with legal provisions pointed out by the ministry of company affairs for conversion of its status from private to public company.