BHU Gold Medallist Prabhakar Rao to Build 250-Room Girls' Hostel for Agriculture Students

Banaras Hindu University is to get a 250-room girls' hostel with room for 500 students, to be built by Dr M. Prabhakar Rao, a gold medallist of the university's Institute of Agricultural Sciences who now heads Nuziveedu Seeds.

The proposal was accepted at the university's Executive Council meeting on Monday. Rao had submitted the proposal himself, and he will also get the building constructed. The university is still deciding where on campus it will stand.

The hostel is planned as a model, women-friendly residence. It will have a mess with modern facilities, a library and other amenities. It will be run by the Institute of Agricultural Sciences, and its rooms will be allotted to women students of that institute.

Vice-Chancellor Prof. Ajit Kumar Chaturvedi referred to the project on Tuesday at the deekshaarambh (induction) programme of the Institute of Agricultural Sciences. He said the university would build a 250-room hostel on the campus with the support of a former student.

Rao was a student at the same institute until 1982. He finished second in the university in the BSc (Agriculture) course and first in the MSc (Agriculture). During his postgraduate studies at BHU he received a gold medal and a merit scholarship.

After finishing his education in 1982, he took over responsibility for Nuziveedu Seeds Limited, the company his father ran. He now runs several companies, including Nuziveedu Seeds. He comes from a farming family in Guntur district of Andhra Pradesh.

The hostel will not be his first contribution to the campus. He had earlier helped in building the Abha guest house at BHU.

The size of the building and the way it will be built are both unusual. At 250 rooms and 500 beds, the hostel is meant for the women students of a single institute. And instead of handing over money for the university to spend, the donor's side will take on the construction itself, on land the university allots.

There is also a personal link. Rao will be building the hostel for his own old institute, more than four decades after he left it with a gold medal.

With the Executive Council's approval in place, what happens next depends on the site. The university has said a location is being identified, and no construction timeline or foundation-stone date has been announced yet.

Once the site is fixed, it will be clearer how soon the institute's women students can expect to move in.