LS passes bills of Sikkim, Arunachal, Tripura Universities

New Delhi, Dec 18 (UNI) Three separate bills to establish central universities in each state of Sikkim, Tripura and Arunachal Pradesh were today passed in the Lok Sabha by a voice vote.

Earlier, the BJP members from Arunachal Pradesh withdrew all their amendments to the bills regarding the name of the university.

The three bills have already been passed by the Rajya Sabha.

Replying to debate on the bills, Minister of State for Human Resources Development M A A Fatmi said these three states in the north-east were not having any central university till now. With the passing of this bill, all the eight states in the north-east region will have at least one central university.

Mr Fatmi said the Government had accepted the legislation passed by the three respective states and not made any changes in the nomenclatures.

Initiating the debate, BJP member Khiren Rijiju welcomed the decision to meet the long-pending demands of the people of Arunachal Pradesh for a central university.

He, however, wanted that as the Arunachal Pradesh University was set up by the state government 22 years ago, its name should not be changed to ''Rajiv Gandhi University''. Such a proposal should be dropped by taking into consideration the sentiments of the people who would like to get the name of their states associated with the University.

''If the government is very particular to have the name of Rajiv Gandhi, then the university should be known as Arunachal Rajiv Gandhi University,'' he suggested.

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