The establishment of the extended campus of Rani Channamma University (RCU) has run into a hurdle with Kittur residents demanding that it be shifted to their hometown where the queen held fort in the 19th century.
The State government had sanctioned government land for the university in Hire Bagewadi village, after the Centre refused to recognise the grant of land to the university in the Bhootaramanahatti forest range.
Satish Jarkiholi, MLA, and Vice-Chancellor Rame Gowda have been maintaining that the RCU would retain its administrative headquarters in Bhootaramanahatti, while the academic sections would be shifted to the new location.
However, this has not been accepted by some organisations from Kittur who demand that the institution should be established in Kittur.
Madiwala Rajayogendra Swami of Kittur Kalmath, former zilla panchayat member Babasaheb Patil, Channamma Utsav committee president Basavaraj Chinagudi held a series of meetings to push for their demand.
The seer also led a few protesters to the tahsildar’s office and urged all elected representatives to sign a petition that the university should be located in Kittur.
Mr. Patil has alleged that Mahantesh Doddagoudar, MLA, had signed a petition asking the government to set up the university in Hire Bagewadi.
RCU emerged from the satellite centre of the Karnataka University, Dharwad, that was set up in 1989. It ran into problems in 2017 when the Union government refused to provide retrospective approval to the grant of forest land by the State government.
The Union Ministry of Forest and Ecology directed the State government “to relocate the university away from the 90 hectares of reserved forest land”.
The arguments of the State government that it was degraded forest land without significant wildlife and that it was a government education institution without profit motive, and that civil construction would be undertaken with minimal damage to the flora and fauna were not accepted.
Dr. Gowda argued that UGC rules allow universities to have multiple campuses.
RCU could easily have more than one campus, just as Delhi University has four campuses and Bombay University has three.
Till recently, Bangalore University had two campuses. We are looking forward to functioning from more than one campus, he added.