PM Narendra Modi to lay foundation stone of Delhi University’s Veer Savarkar College tomorrow

Prime Minister Narendra Modi is likely to lay the foundation stones on Friday for two new campuses of the Delhi University in East and West Delhi that shall have colleges named after Hindutva ideologue Veer Savarkar and late BJP leader Sushma Swaraj, sources said.

The PM is also likely to visit Ashok Vihar in Northwest Delhi for the inauguration of a few DDA projects, sources added.

While the college named after Savarkar is set to come up in the West Delhi campus in Najafgarh, the institute named after late BJP leader Sushma Swaraj will be set up in the DU’s East Delhi campus in Fatehpur Beri, sources said.

The proposal to name these colleges after the two leaders was cleared at a meeting of the Executive Council in 2021. During the meeting, Vice-Chancellor Yogesh Singh declared that the names of Swaraj and Savarkar had been finalised for consideration.

“The university was allotted land in Najafgarh in West Delhi and Fatehpur Beri in East Delhii for the establishment of the two colleges. A girls’ college is set to come up in Fatehpur Beri, and it has been decided to name it after Sushma Swaraj,” said an official. “We are making all efforts to have the PM for the inauguration of both the East and West Delhi campuses,” the official added.

On the discussion about the names for the colleges, former acting vice-chancellor P C Joshi told The Indian Express, “Several names were floated in the Executive Council during my tenure – of reformer Swami Vivekananda; BJP leaders Sushma Swaraj and Arun Jaitley; and that of Savarkar too but nothing was finalised. We wanted to build colleges in Fatehpur Beri and Najafgarh but were facing a shortage of funds. We laid the boundaries on the land allotted and also set up facility centres.”

“The idea was to place university officials in these facility centres and help out students in the neighbouring areas to provide them with the required documentation and paperwork to avoid them coming all the way to DU,” Joshi added.

At present, DU has two campuses – North and South. The university had announced the expansion plans a few years back, envisaging the construction of East and West Delhi campuses to introduce more courses and a centre for law. In January 2024, Vice-Chancellor Yogesh Singh outlined a comprehensive plan for infrastructure development with an estimated allocation of Rs 1,633.6 crore for the projects. A campus in Surajmal Vihar and an academic block at Dwarka are also in the works. “Construction is expected to begin by April…,” Singh had said earlier. He had added that the East Delhi campus is expected to be ready by 2026.