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Lack of land cripples expansion of premier city college

By City Correspondent

GUWAHATI, June 2 - B Borooah College in the city has been facing an acute crisis of space on its campus, which makes the further expansion of its academic activities uncertain.

"As the college is located in the middle of the city and in a very busy locality, there is no scope for the college authority to expand its campus," said a source in the institution.

The college, which was established in 1943 in the name of Bholanath Borooah, has ten departments in the Arts stream and seven departments in the Science stream. Along with higher secondary, undergraduate courses in both the Science and Arts streams and postgraduate courses in Botany, Chemistry and Zoology, the college also offers higher secondary classes, B Sc in Information Technology and Bachelor in Business Administration in self-supportive mode.

"Crisis of extra land is a serious problem for many colleges in the city. We still lack our own playground and a girls' hostel. For sports activity, we use the field of Nehru Stadium. On the other hand, recently, we got a proposal to build a girls' hostel with the fund from the Rashtriya Uchchattar Shiksha Abhiyan (RUSA). But due to the space constraint, we failed to utilise the option," the source told The Assam Tribune.

The source further stated that though hundreds of meritorious students get enrolled in the institution every year, the college authority has very little scope to erect new buildings to accommodate more courses in its list of academic activities.

"Gauhati University from this year introduces the choice based credit system through which every student could avail the opportunity to study a subject of their choice, despite the regular syllabus. To implement the system, there is a need for more buildings, which is not possible on our campus," said the source.

Meanwhile, electricity bill and GMC tax become an extra financial hurdle for the college authority.

"Most of the academic expenses we manage are generated from the admission fee of students. Every month, we pay around Rs 2 lakh of electricity bill from the fund collected during admission time," said the source.

Jyotishman Deka, general secretary of the B Borooah College Students' Union, said, "A playground and a girls' hostel are the need of the hour for us. We have already urged the authority to address those two issues."

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