New Delhi: The Centre on Wednesday gave its nod to the introduction of a legislation in the ongoing session of Parliament for converting three Sanskrit universities into central universities.
News agency PTI quoted Union Minister Prakash Javadekar as saying that the Union Cabinet cleared the introduction of the Central Sanskrit Universities Bill 2019 in this session.
Rashtriya Sanskrit Sansthan and Shri Lal Bahadur Shastri Rashtriya Sanskrit Vidyapeeth in New Delhi along with Rashtriya Sanskrit Vidyapeeth at Tirupati will be upgraded into central universities once the legislation gets the Parliament’s approval. They are, at present, operating as deemed universities.
The Narendra Modi Government had in December last year made an announcement for giving central status to these institutes in view of demands from various quarters.
“Based on the persistent demand from Sanskrit scholars and academia, the Ministry of Human Resource and Development has initiated a proposal to convert the three deemed-to-be universities into central universities to make them a seat of Sanskrit learning of national and international repute,” the Ministry had said in a written reply in the Parliament then. Some RSS-affiliated bodies had also made representations to the Ministry in this regard.
At present, there are 49 central universities in the country.