Meanwhile, the faculty members of the GU Bengalee and Persian Departments have been working on an Assamese-Persian dictionary. This project, which has tremendous significance for preparing a perfect history of the State for the mediaeval and modern periods, is expected to be completed within the next three to four months.

The University has by this time emerged as a popular venue for national level seminars of the academia of the country and abroad. It hosted an international seminar on culture and religion on February 4, while it is hosting three national seminars in the current month and in the months of October and December next.

While the first one is being organized by its Political Science Department on February 25, the second one is being organized by its philosophy department. The university is hosting the third national level colloquium in the form of Indian Social Science Congress in December next.

Moreover, the university is also working on a plan to construct a new three-storey academic building to house its new departments and to provide classrooms for the new courses being launched by it. The size of the building is planned to be around 10,000 square feet.

GU Vice-Chancellor Prof O K Medhi, while disclosing the this newspaper, said that the roof of the existing building of the KK Handique Library had also been repaired by this time.

It needs mention here that the leaks appearing in the roof of the KK Handique Library’s existing building had led to uproars last year with several quarters complaining that many valuable collections in the Library were damaged by the rainwater seeping into the building through the leaks.

Prof Medhi informed that the above plans are being executed with the help of the Rs 25 crore the university had received from the State Government about one and half a year back.

With the use of the sum, the university has also provided computers to the teachers of each of its departments. Computers have also been provided to the laboratories too. These computers are connected with a local area network linking each of them inside and outside the departments so as to ensure intra and interdepartmental academic cooperation etc.

Each of the GU departments has a modern classroom with all the modern facilities and several of them have already been provided with seminar/ conference rooms and modern audio-visual facilities, Prof Medhi said.

GU has 38 old departments and some more are coming up now due to the decision of the GU authorities to launch new courses.

The Union Department of Science and Technology (DST) has sanctioned funds worth Rs 85 lakh to GU for purchase of scientific equipment for its departments. An amount of Rs 50 lakh of the sanctioned amount has been released already to the university, Prof Medhi said.

Meanwhile, according to other GU sources, the GU Institute of NE Studies has already been set up with Prof Umesh Deka, Dean of the Faculty of Arts, as the Director. It will start functioning soon.

The university is also preparing itself to receive the expert team of the University Grants Commission’s National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC) between March 16 and 19, said the sources.