GUJRAT: At least a 100-acre piece of land will be acquired for the establishment of a sub-campus of the University of Gujrat (UoG) in Mandi Bahauddin district.

The Punjab government has recently directed the land revenue department to select some suitable land for the sub-campus.

Tauqeer Ilyas Cheema, additional deputy commissioner revenue (ADCR) Mandi Bahauddin, told Dawn over telephone that out of Rs200 million allocated for land acquisition, a sum of Rs150m had been released.

Adding he said a search for a ‘suitable’ land had already been launched and hopefully the selection would be finalised within a couple of weeks after which the process to notify the section 4 of Land Acquisition Act would be issued in that particular area.

He said land in the outskirts of Mandi Bahauddin city that could be an easy approach for the students across the district, might be selected as two or three proposed sites were under consideration.

The establishment of UoG sub-campus has been a longstanding demand of the people of Mandi Bahauddin which is being entertained by the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf government, said a local party leader while talking to this correspondent.

He said the students had to go to other cities for study, particularly girls would often quit higher studies.

The last PML-N government in Punjab had also established Punjab University of Technology (PUT) at Rasul, Mandi Bahauddin, through the approval of an act in Punjab Assembly in 2018. However, the varsity is yet to get its own campus for academic and administrative blocks.

Published in Dawn, September 8th, 2021