PATNA: Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar on Monday said the state’s university and college staff would soon be paid salary and perks at par with the recommendations of the central government’s Seventh Pay Commission.

“I have already asked the education department to constitute a committee to finalise nitty-gritty for payment of revised pay-scale to the staff of state’s universities and colleges in accordance to the Seventh Pay Commission’s recommendations. The state government will start payment of the revised pay-scales, soon after the committee submits its report,” he said after formally inaugurating Pataliputra University (PPU) at a colourful programme held at the S K Memorial Hall here.

Around 8,000 teachers of different state-funded universities and colleges and 30,000 non-teaching employees would be benefitted with implementation of the revised pay-scale. The Seventh Pay Commission recommendations for the central government staff was implemented from January 1, 2016.

Though the PPU’s maiden academic session (2018-19) began from July 2 this year, it was formally inaugurated on Monday. Created after bifurcation of Magadh University , PPU has altogether 25 constituent colleges spread in Patna and Nalanda districts.

Addressing the teachers and students of the new university, CM said the state government has also decided to allocate some area on the campus of Chandragupta Institute of Management- Patna (CIMP) for smooth functioning the PPU. He said the Patna-based extension centre of Magadh University had already been allotted to the PPU for running its offices.

Nitish, however, rejected the PPU’s Pro VC Girish Kumar Choudhary’s demand for allotting 300 acres of land for proper development of the new university, asking, “Whether a vacant area of 300 acres available in and around Patna? If you want an area of 300 acres, then the university will have to go out of the boundary of the old city of Pataliputra. Then, its name will not match with the historic importance of Pataliputra.”

He said the new university has been named on the historic importance of the old city of Pataliputra, thus its works should also be ‘historic’. “I have some concepts for this university. But I will not reveal here. I will discuss those concepts with the Chancellor-cum-governor Satya Pal Malik and urge him to implement,” Nitish said.

Assuring all sort of financial and infrastructural assistance to the PPU, CM told the university teachers not to remain worried about their salary and focus on the teaching works. “Government is here to worry about your salary. Your ‘dharma’ is to provide quality education to students, just concentrate on that, we will take care of other things,” he said.

Reminding that Bihar was once known as the ‘land of knowledge’, CM asked the teachers to focus on imparting quality education to students so that Bihar could regain its lost glory of being ‘Gyan Ki Bhoomi’ where people from other countries used to come for study in ancient period.

